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THE SEED THAT WAS SOWN IN THE 
COLONY OF GEORGIA 



N' 



THE SEED THAT WAS SOWN 

IN THE 

COLONY OF GEORGIA 

THE HARVEST AND THE AFTERMATH 
1740-1870 



BY 

CHARLES SPALDING WYLLY 




New York and Washington 

THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1910 






% 



Copyright, 1910, by 
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 



©CI,A259888 



^f^-^"^"^ 



This work is respectfully inscribed to my friend, C. Downing, of 

Brunswick, Georgia, whose clear brain, kind heart and 

free hand is an example and inspiration 

An honest heart is one that strongly feels 

The pulse of passion and the throb of pain. 

But asks assistance from a healthy brain 

To stem all morbid current sentiment, should it steal 

Into the veins with darkening stain; 

A heart light beating, which may reveal 

The torch of sin but struggles free again. 

Repentant, looking to the Lamb who heals. 

Not such my heart, a football for the crowd. 

Now high in air, now trampled on the ground. 

Till bruised, benumbed, and ossified, it lies. 

And mercy. Lord, should mutter ere it dies. 



PREFACE 

When a writer has assumed the burden of review- 
ing the result of any great national decision it is 
impossible to ignore the surroundings and environ- 
ments of the participants therein. The beliefs held by 
the adverse parties as essential articles of their faith 
become not only the causes but personages in the 
conflict: To one party immediate increase of pros- 
perity and probable wealth seemed a creed entitled 
to universal assent. To a smaller number a patient 
awaiting for a natural growth and strength ap- 
peared a wiser choice. The first asserted " That in 
this climate a white man could not labor," the other 
claimed " That in a year a white man's labor was 
more than that of a slave." I have but moved the 
shadow backward on the dial : where now does it 
point.'' In endeavoring to give concisely and truth- 
fully the political steps that finally led to the 
Break, I have been mindful that to the children of 
to-day the war of the sixties seems but " old his- 
tory " and that any investigation into the causes of 
that war would appear like a groping for a former 
life, through and by the footprints found in fossil 
remains. This, with the fact that in those days a 



8 PREFACE 

great national drama was being enacted before my 
very eyes, must be my apology for writing as I 
have. 

Charles Spalding Wylly. 

Bruistswick, Georgia, December 20, 1908. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Seeding 11 

II. The Harvest 84 

III. The Aftermath 82 

IV. The Pilots 93 

V. St. Simon's and Jekyl Islands . . . 132 

Appendix I 145 

Appendix II 158 



The Seed that Was Sown in 
the Colony of Georgia 



THE SEEDING 

To-day I have been permitted to read the " Recol- 
lections of Mrs. George C. Dent, written for her 
grandson." So impressed have I been that I find 
myself tempted to emulate this model of a departed 
culture in an attempt to place on record what I 
have known, and what I have had told me, of those 
who once lived in the counties of Gljnn and Mc- 
intosh. 

An Eastern writer says : " A man will not after 
death be remembered unless he has left a son, built 
a house, or written a book." 

A son has not been granted to me ; a house I have 
not built ; a real book I cannot write. Once, with 
effort, I published a pamphlet entitled "Annals of 
Glynn." In its pages many of the families with 
whom I am connected, socially and by blood, are 
briefly noted. In the limits to which I will be bound 
only the fragments of those busy lives can be re- 
cast, and the mental characteristics that I shall seek 
to disclose will be but the shadowy skeletons of 



1^ THE SEEDING 

minds that were once ruling factors in the commu- 
nities where they lived. I have thought, and still 
think, that one telling anecdote will often better il- 
lustrate and give more life to a word-picture than 
pages of description. 

As I think, so I will write; and I trust these ad- 
denda to the first work may meet at least that par- 
doning and half-pitying smile I have often seen 
creep to young lips as they gave meek hearing to 
the prosy words of the old. 

My memories are mostly confined to the residents 
of the tide-water sections, and more especially to 
those of the islands of Sapelo, Saint Simon and 
Jekyl. These sea- and marsh-encircled barriers to 
the ocean were early settled by a class of immigrants 
who in a large measure became the seed beds from 
which much of the manhood and culture of the com- 
ing State were drawn. Immediately adjoining were 
the planters of the reclaimed swamp lands. A dif- 
ference in the form of agriculture had, by the in- 
exorable law of environment, aff^ected those follow- 
ing the diverse industries. On the islands both a 
winter and a summer home were possible, and there 
was no absenteeism. The ever-present, ever-dictat- 
ing, always over-ruling influence of slavery there 
assumed its least harmful form. In the best in- 
stances it became patriarchal in its government; 
and in its worst it was tempered by the pride of 
ownership and softened by the direct personal at- 
tention and interest of the owner. 



THE SEEDING IS 

On the richer lands a summer residence was im- 
possible. From May to December the fortune and 
well-being of the subject race was committed to a 
hired substitute — often chosen from a class totally 
unworthy of trust. And again, the returns from 
these lands being large, the possession of money in 
considerable sums increased absenteeism and fos- 
tered a desire for luxurious surroundings. The re- 
sult, in many cases, was unfortunate. 

Gradually, and certainly, what had been serf- 
hood became slavery, and the slave sank to but a 
" chattel," having lost even the personal acquain- 
tanceship and feudal love which once had gilded his 
chain. The consequence of an expensive and dis- 
sipated habit of life pressed upon the o^vne^, 
prompting harsh measures toward the exaction of 
greater tasks ; while too often, by the terms of a 
mortgage, a public sale was forced, and, with that, 
there came the partial breaking up of family ties — 
which gave to the great novelist ^ of the fifties the 
" climaxes and situations " with which she hypno- 
tized the world into a stern determination that an 
end must be made of this reversal and denial of 
American declarations. 

I have written the above passages, knowing well 
under what a light of ante-bellum semi-darkness 
they will be viewed by kinsman or acquaintance who 
may chance upon them. Be it so. Marie-Bashkirt- 
sseff-like, I shall bare my thoughts and beliefs, even 

1 Mrs. Stowe. , 



14 THE SEEDING 

to their nudities. Too long jealously cloaked in 
the hereditary garments of personal interest and 
masked from any light of discussion have they laid 
dormant, for there was no feature in the " peculiar " 
institution that did not work far more to the in- 
jury of the white than to the black race. 

It was the cause and the very " raison d'etre " of 
failure and want of enterprise in the young. It 
encouraged idleness by the debasement of honest 
manual work to the standard of slave labor. It 
clouded the vision, so that only in the stronger minds 
were the eyes uplifted to the nobler realms of 
thought and action. It even, in some cases, per- 
verted justice by the spectre^ of a coming debacle, 
in which all might be lost. 

And 3^et it was a legacy made sacred by the tra- 
ditions of years and strong by its social power, since 
it claimed, with truth, that only through invest- 
ment in that form could money certainly and surely 
bring to its owners a social equality with the higher 
and the most aristocratic circles of our Southern 
land. And in a neighboring State (a f^ir sample 
of all) even the doors of the " St. Cecelia " — jeal- 
ously closed where entrance was asked for mere 
wealth, however great — in time would swing wide 
at the touch of those who knocked accompanied by 
a train of inherited slaves, with the accompanying 
prestige of a plantation home. 

It is a pleasure to close these pessimistic views 

2 See Appendix II on use of the word " spectre." 



THE SEEDING 15 

and turn to the recollections of my youth, which are 
greatly suffused with visits to Sapelo, the home of 
my grandfather, Thomas Spalding. 

Neither himself nor his house had any counter- 
part in the county. He had, early in life, married 
a Miss Sarah Leake, who must have been a woman 
of great gifts and endowed by nature with every 
beauty of person, mind and heart, since, as after- 
ward of my cousin Mrs. M. C. S., neither I nor 
anyone before me have yet heard any words but 
those lifted in unstinted testimony to a perfection 
of heart and mind unknown and unmet with in 
others. 

Mrs. Dent writes that Charles Cotesworth Pinck- 
ney, after a visit to Mr. Spalding, " stopped at my 
father's, and said: ' Mrs. Spalding, sir, would grace 
a king's court, or make a dairy sweet.' " I am very 
sure, had he met my cousin and sister-in-law, his 
phrase would have been repeated and reiterated. 

Du Maurier tells of a legend that in every hun- 
dred years one nightingale is given to the world, so 
that each recurring century may listen to a perfec- 
tion of melody ! This may or may not be ; but I 
am sure that these two lovely women were created 
that we who knew them and their daughters might 
take to heart and realize the full meaning of the 
words of the Annunciation : 

" Blessed art thou among all women . . . " 
(See St. Luke 1:42.) 

Thomas Spalding was born in 1774. Plis father 



16 THE SEEDING 

was from Ashantilly, Scotland, and had embarked 
in the Indian trade. His storehouses made a 
chain from Sunbury, Georgia, to Volusia, Florida, 
and northward by the Chattahoochee to the Tennes- 
see ; his canoes floated southward and northward to 
Frederica, the central storehouse. Adhering to the 
Crown at the bursting of the revolutionary storm, 
he saw his possessions seized and confiscated. " Un- 
der an act of banishment and exile " he retired to 
Florida, then a British province, and devoted him- 
self to the education of his only child. So well did 
he succeed, that in after years, his son was recog- 
nized as one of the foremost scholars of his day, for 
he had brought an unmatched memory to bear upon 
the history of the past ; had himself been a witness 
to the birth of the State, a nurse to her infancy, and 
a guide to her manhood. A biographical sketch 
of him can be found on page 634 of White's Histor- 
ical Records. It is from the pen of James Hamilton 
Couper, Esquire, and tells the life of Mr. Spalding 
in better words than it is given me to use. 

In 1796 he bought the larger part of Sapelo 
Island, selling his home at " Retreat," on St. Simon. 
Here he built, at the " South End," a house modeled 
after Roman examples. The walls were three feet 
thick ; the four reception-rooms, thirty-two by 
twenty-six feet ; with chambers of corresponding 
size. Nor was the frame unworthy of the building: 
north, south, and west it was embraced and abso- 
lutely enveloped by gigantic oaks ; eastward, it 



THE SEEDING 17 

looked direct on the sea. The waving moss cast 
constant shadowy glooms, interlaced, like life, with 
gleams of light and brightness — with mind at- 
tuned to Nature's somber picture, it might be. 

Steeped in retrospective thought, through col- 
umned aisles, high-arched in living green, a visitor 
passed ; cool shadows from bannered moss moved 
ahead and beside you — shadows that, at times, 
seemed to flit away, as though in the presence of a 
memory or a sorrow. The eastern doorway is 
reached — then look ! 

The blue sea rolled before him, every wave with 
sparkling crest, every ripple smiling to chase some 
mournful thought or fretful care away. 

In this di-uid-like grove my grandfather idly 
dreamt he had founded, in perpetuity, the seat of 
a family. But a year ago I stood by the ruined 
wall, and, in the deep monotone of a stormy sea, 
I thought I could hear, in each in-coming wave, a 
warning of a To Be, succeeded by a To Have, whilst 
every out-going rush and sweep of the surge gave, 
in fateful response — And Nothing More. 

A PARAPHRASE 

The South End Sapelo Island 
" The splendor falls on castle-walls 
And moss-grown oaks now old in story; 
The long light shakes across the sea, 
And the great white waves leap in glory: 
Blow, bugle, blow: set the wild echoes flying; 
Blow, bugle: answer echoes, — dying, dying, dying. 



18 THE SEEDING 

" Oh, hark ! Oh, hear ! How thin and clear 
And thinner — clearer — further going — 
Oh, sweet and far, o'er sea and wave 
The horns of woodland faintly blowing — 
Blow! Let us hear the purple glens replying; 
Blow, bugle: answer echoes, — dying, dying, dying." 

The Princess. 

In addition to the Spalding household two fam- 
ilies resided on the island. I have now the Marquis 
de Montalet's edition of Rousseau's works, Paris, 
1792, in 39 volumes, calf bound. On the fly leaf 
appears the following: 

Marquis de Montalet, Sapelo, 1793 

James Spalding, 1813 

Charles Spalding, 1825 

C. S. Wylly, 1886. 

The Marquis de Montalet had made liis home at 
the north pojnt, and on the northeastern front Mon- 
sieur de Boewfqllet had established his seat. The 
Marquis, a widower and emigre, devoted himself to 
horticulture, and his flowers and gardens were the 
envy of all visitors. He also paid attention to the 
development of the native talent of his colored cook, 
" Cupidon," hoping to make him worthy of a cor- 
don bleu in the art cuisine. Two at least of Cupi- 
don's pupils became famous. Mr. John Couper's 
man " Sans-foix " excelled even his master; and 
" French Davy," aftenvard my mother's cook, had 
greatly profited by his teaching. 



THE SEEDING 19 

/^ . t S u. . 

' Monsieur Bo^f§;illet, with Madame and their 

daughter Natalie, were the would-be aristocrats of 
the island. Their servants wore liver}^, and the 
family left cards after calling, or, more often, 
" spending the day." 

Among the frequent visitors there was often 
found the household of Captain Cottineau,^ consist- 
ing of Madame and her brother, the " Abbe Carl." 
The Captain had commanded the sloop Alliance, 
consort to Le bonne Homme Richard in the histor- 
ical sea fight with the Serapis; and had given Com- 
modore Paul Jones loyal aid; had remained faithful 
to the lilies of Bourbon ; and now lived in the hope 
of a day of restoration, and recall to " beautiful 
France." With true Gallic light-heartedness they 
bore their bad and good fortune ; fraternized with 
their neighbors at the " South End " ; gave formal 
dinners, one to the other; with Mr. Spalding, dis- 
cussed the latest works of Rousseau and of Vol- 
taire; sacre'd all republican ideas and institutions, 
as they drank the healths of the royal family of 
France, never losing their sweetness of temper save 

3 Mde. Cotteneau in co-operation with her brother the Abbe 
kept a very exclusive school for the teaching, as see advertise 
ment in Georgia Gazette, of the " true Parisian accent and po- 
lite manner with the Classics." — Mr. Randolph Bryan, Joseph 
Bryan, James Scrieven, Charles Spalding, George Houston 
Mcintosh, Miss Bryan, afterward Mrs. Wm. MacKay, Eliza- 
beth Spalding, Katharine Spalding and James Spalding with 
Margery Baillie, afterwards Mrs. J. W. Kell, were for years 
students and boarders. The school was on West Broad St., 
Savannah. 



XK ^- 






20 THE SEEDING 

at the mention of some late victory of " le scelerat 
de Napoleon." 

Thus on the little island there had been thrown a 
nobleman, whose very breath had been that of the 
Court of France ; a man of the successful bourgeois 
"class of Paris, with his wife and daughter; and 
lastly a gentleman, American born, of Scotch de- 
scent and education, whom travel had made some- 
what cosmopolitan. 

In each of the homes the library was the room 
most frequented. The paucity of social life forced 
a book companionship, and when chance or pur- 
pose threw the residents together the conversation 
turned into channels as unlike the talk, chat, and 
repartee of the present day as is possible to be im- 
agined. To lend color to this life there were, on the 
eighteen square miles comprising the island, some 
five hundred slaves, many fresh from darkest Africa, 
some of Moorish or Arabian descent, devout Mus- 
sulmans, who prayed to Allah morning, noon and 
evening; all loyal and devoted to their respective 
owners, never questioning act or motive, taking an 
absolute pride in their servitude to those of the 
family name, and as devoted to their title of Spald- 
ing as ever a Mcintosh to his Chief of Clan Chat- 
tan in the mountains of Scotland. The work re- 
quired of them was of the lightest. Fully one- 
third of the day was given to them to devote to 
their own industries. The women worked their own 
plots and gardens; the men fished, wove baskets for 



THE SEEDING 21 

sale, and hunted. Fish abounded in the creeks. 
Oysters, crabs, clams and turtle were to be had 
for the gathering, and I honestly believe that in 
this early stage of the planting life of the sea-coast 
there was here perhaps found the happiest form of 
peasant life that our country could show. 

I have used the words " happiest form of peas- 
ant life that our country could show." I would 
say that I refer only to that early and almost initi- 
ative stage found in the evolution of the savage 
into a higher state of civilization, before there has 
been bom in him that inherent love of personal free- 
dom which rises in every breast as mental manhood 
is approached. Slavery, in its first stage, is not an 
unmitigated evil; it is an apprenticeship, through 
which a race becomes worthy of freedom. The 
wrong is in its continuation after a goal has been 
reached which should have marked the end of the 
course. It is as though, in the evolution of plant 
life, you should deny fruit to follow after the flower 
and so bring the species to its end. 

It is of the days long anterior to my own that 
I have thus written. When first I recall personal 
memories the Marquis was long dead and buried un- 
der, his fruit trees at " Chocolate " ; Monsieur de 
Boettf^illet, with Madame, had removed themselves 
to Savannah ; Mademoiselle Na+aHe 'had been twice 
married, first to Ralph Clay, Esquire, of Bryan 
County, Georgia, and after his death to Doctor 
Kearney of New Jersey, Surgeon in the United 



aa THE SEEDING 

States Army ; Captain Cottlneau was lying in 
Christ Church Cemetery (now Colonial Park), 
Savannah. The Bourbons had come again to their 
own. Madame Cottineau, with her brother the Abbe, 
had been recalled and rewarded by pension and posts 
in the restored Court. Madame Cottineau's only 
son had been commissioned in the United States 
Navy, had served in active service, and had died 
in a duel, the only duel I have ever known that was 
instigated and prompted by the generous and af- 
fectionate love he bore to the adversary by whose 
pistol he fell. The story is worth telling. 

Lieutenant Cottineau, when on a cruise, noticed 
that a comrade, like himself, of Savannah, was 
placed in the disagreeable situation of finding him- 
self, in naval parlance, " in Coventry " with his 
brother officers. One evening, when the night- 
watch had accidentally fallen to himself and this 
officer, after a long silence he called to him : 

" P st,* come here," and said, " I see you 

are in a very bad fix." 

" I know it," was the answer, " but what can I 
do.?" 

" You must ' call one of them out,' " answered 
Cottineau. 

" So I would," said P st, " but they will 

4 Lieut. P St, U. S. N. He walked the streets of Sa- 
vannah the rest of his life, having been forced to resign from 
the service. I in my youth saw him haunting the Pulaski bar 
and a supernumerary in life. 



THE SEEDING 23 

say they can't meet me, for that would break the 
Coventry." 

" Then, by G — d, I will break it," was the an- 
swer. " Challenge me ; I will meet you." 

The ship made port a week afterward. Matters, 
as arranged, were carried out, and at the first fire 
Cottineau fell dead, shot through the heart. 

The home life of the household was enlivened by 
a constant succession of visitors. The word " house- 
party " was not then coined, but in its practice was 
of long standing. The most common mode of enter- 
tainment was the giving of formal dinners. Danc- 
ing, unlike at Saint Simon Island, was not usual 
until near the fifties. Cards were not approved of 
and in many families were held in abhorrence. The 
men arranged hunting, fishing and shooting par- 
ties for the mornings and forenoons. The ladies 
rode much on horseback, but never, as is now com- 
mon, joined the men in their field sports; conver- 
sation and needlework were their chief resources. 
Some used pencil and brush, but almost invariably 
the work consisted in the mere copying of a print, 
or a painting. Sketching from nature or drawing 
from life was very rare. The first persons I ever 
saw cultivating and appreciative of genuine art 
were my wife's brothers, Hamilton and John Cou- 
per; and I do remember, in addition, a Mr. Walker, 
a relative I believe of Washington Alston, the ar- 
tist, who was a visitor to " Elizafield," the home of 
Major Hugh Eraser Grant. 



24 THE SEEDING 

The mistress of one of these plantation houses, 
and hostess to this never-ending house-party, led an 
arduous life. Servants she had in numbers ; but, 
excepting perhaps a butler or a head house-maid, 
they were often idle, incompetent, and needed her 
constant oversight and care. Almost every half 
hour during the day would she be called to admin- 
ister to some want or to grant or refuse some re- 
quest from her many dependents. At nine the plan- 
tation nurse arrived with a list or " tally " of the 
sick. 

The serious cases had to be visited first, and, if 
necessary, a physician summoned; for the others, 
medicine to be prescribed, weighed and measured. 
At eleven the wagon from the quarters came, with 
probably the whole carcass of a beef or sheep, and 
she was required to direct the cutting of the joints 
reserved for the table and kitchen and order the 
disposal of the remainder. The cook must have a 
personal interview and minute directions. The same 
was demanded by the fisherman, who wished to show 
his catch and receive orders regarding the opening 
of oysters, clams, or the boiling of crabs or prawn. 
At twelve the three seamstresses, whose perpetual 
work was the fashioning of plantation garments, ar- 
rived with their baskets of completed coats, pants 
or shirts. These must be " checked up " against 
the cloth, buttons and thread that had been issued 
them and other woolens and home-spuns measured 
and delivered. And by now the butler wished to 



THE SEEDING 25 

know what he had best serve to the gentlemen re- 
turning from their hunt. 

At two a tired and weary woman sank into a 
chair, hoping for a brief rest. Vain hope — a 
frightened mother calls for " Missis " to " just run 
up to de quarter to see little Nancy, who is fall into 
a fit." A half mile of unshaded road intervenes. 
But go she must. The fit is found to be but in- 
digestion ; and once again this " self-indulgent, pam- 
pered child of luxury " dreams of rest ! Not so ; 
old Simon stops to say he would like some pain 
killer, also tobacco. Bella says she must tell her 
Missis she and Tom, her husband, have agreed to 
part ; a lesson on marital duties is to be read, and 
after that some kind words are to be spoken. 

It is more than three in the afternoon before the 
grateful shade of the home mansion is reached. 
Dinner is to be served at half after four and to a 
number unknown until the sounding of the bell, but 
which experience has taught will certainly have 
been increased by any stray men or women her hus- 
band may have met during his morning's ride or 
hunt. 

I have refrained from reciting the countless ad- 
ditional duties and requirements, should she chance 
to be the mother of a growing family. Then noth- 
ing but the presence of that, to Southern mothers, 
" best and most blessed gift of the gods," the col- 
ored mammy, whose faithful love and never-tiring 
care soothed every childish grief and watched over 



26 THE SEEDING 

both sleeping and waking hours, could hinder a 
daily uplifting of the Psalmist's cry: 

" Oh, that I had the wings of a dove, 
For then would I flee away and be at rest." 

The reader may ask: And what part of these 
tasks and never-laid-down burdens did the master 
and husband assume as his share? 

I regret to answer that, for the large majority, 
their duty, as they saw it, was to look to the proper 
cultivation of the various crops and to supervise 
the discipline and expenses of the establishment. 
These two completed, their only other aim was to 
draw from life, for themselves, just as much pleas- 
ure and amusement as they could possibly contrive. 
The largest number occupied themselves entirely in 
field sports ; a smaller portion found interest in local 
or State politics ; while the small remainder culti- 
vated, in their libraries, an acquaintance with the 
best literature of the past and present day, their 
reading greatly tending more to history and belle 
lettres than to scientific subjects. Gibbon's " De- 
cline and Fall," Hume's and Smollet's histories of 
England, and the Annual Register, which mirrored 
the contemporary life of Europe, were the books 
handed oftenest to me in my youth. Afterward, the 
great writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Mon- 
tesquieu were recommended for perusal as a diet 
more suitable to my increased strength of mind. 

The sons of " well-to-do " families were sent 



THE SEEDING 27 

abroad and received fair educations, with collegiate 
training. But that of the daughters was in general 
intrusted exclusively to governesses. The colleges 
and finishing schools that now offer to the feminine 
sex advantages not inferior to what Princeton, Har- 
vard and Yale give to their brothers, were unknown. 
One or at most two years in Charleston or Savannah 
gave the finishing touch to an education that was 
often followed quickly by an early marriage. Yet, 
in some way, so great was the desire for excellence, 
so bright the minds, and so thorough the grounding, 
that, in comparing the style in writing, conversa- 
tion, and manner of the mothers with their children 
of to-day, I am forced to the conclusion that the 
careful and special work of the past loses nothing 
when brought in contrast with the more extended 
curricula of the present time. 

The County of Mcintosh was first exclusively set- 
tled by a body of Highlanders from the mountains 
of Scotland, who preserved for a time their national 
garb and, in a measure, their speech. " With Clay- 
more plaid and target," we are told, they met Ogle- 
thorpe on his first visit of inspection,'* offering at 
night a couch fitted with the only pair of sheets 
owned by the good souls that composed the outpost, 
which the General very gallantly declined. I have 
been told that at a comparatively modern day the 

5 This was the iirst uniformed parade in Georgia. Wm. Mc- 
intosh, son to John Mcintosh, was the first officer to hold a 
commission in the cavalry raised by the State of Georgia, See 
" Georgia Hussars," by A. McDuncan. 



S8 THE SEEDING 

ballads of Ossian could be recited in Gaelic by a 
Miss Jeannie McDonald of Arduch (she having re- 
ceived them direct from her Highland mother), — a 
fact, if time, that should go far in refuting the ac- 
cepted belief that these so-called translations are 
only forgeries of McPherson's. 

When we consider the innate love of personal free- 
dom that in all ages and in all climes has distin- 
guished every mountaineer, a love that seems to have 
sprung from daily association with nature in her 
sublimest form and to have been nourished by the 
uplifting peaks that hold always a silent communion 
with free thought, free speech, and free men, it 
ought not to surprise us when we find so early as 
January, 1739, a strong and prophetic petition from 
the citizens of New Inverness addressed to the Gov- 
ernor-General and praying that he give no ear to 
the constant appeal of Savannah and the other 
settlements for the repeal of the clause in the Georgia 
charter forbidding forever the introduction of Afri- 
can slaves. 

I copy it, and it can be read in volume one, pages 
90, 91 and 92 of McCall's History of Georgia, and, 
if stronger evidence is desired, in the " Journals of 
the Trustees," at London, England. 

To his excellency General Oglethorpe: 

We are informed that our neighbors of Savannah 
have petitioned your excellency for the liberty of hav- 
ing slaves. We hope and earnestly entreat, before such 
proposals are hearkened unto, your excellency will con- 



THE SEEDING 29 

sider our situation and of what dangerous and bad 
consequences such liberty would be to us^ for many 
reasons. 

First. The nearness of the Spaniards, who have 
proclaimed freedom to all slaves who run from their 
masters, makes it impossible for us to keep them with- 
out more labor in watching them than we would be at 
to do their work. 

Second. We are laborious and know a white man 
may be, by the year, more usefully employed than n 
negro. 

Third. We are not rich ; and becoming in debt for 
slaves, in case of their running away or dying, would 
inevitably ruin the poor master and he would become a 
greater slave to the negro-merchant than the slave he 
bought could have been to him. 

Fourth. It would oblige us to keep a guard duty 
at least as severe as when we expected daily an inva- 
sion; and if that should be the case, how miserable 
would be to us and our wives and children to have 
an enemy without and a more dangerous one in our own 
bosom. 

Fifth. It is shocking to human nature that any race 
of mankind and their posterity should be sentenced to 
perpetual slavery. Nor in justice can we think other- 
wise of it that they are thrown amongst us, to be our 
scourge one day or other for our sins ; and, as freedom 
to them must be as dear as to us, what a scene of horror 
must it bring about! And the longer it is unexecuted, 
the bloody scene must be greater. 

We therefore, for our own sakes, our wives, and our 
posterity, beg your consideration and interest, that, in- 
stead of introducing slaves, you will put us in the way 



30 THE SEEDING 

to get some of our countrymen^ who, with their own 
labor, in time of peace and our vigilance, if we are 
invaded, with the help of them will render it a difficult 
thing to hurt us or that part of the province we may 
possess. 

We will forever pray for your excellency and we are, 
with all submission. Your excellency's most obedient 

Humble Servants, etc. 

New Inverness (Darien), January 3, 1739- 

The history says : " This petition was signed by 
eighteen persons of New Inverness." 

In an old manuscript I have the names as given 
to Mr. Charles Spalding by his father, as follows : 

John Mohr Mcintosh 

John Mcintosh of Lynvulgie 

Ronald McDonald 

Hugh Morrison 

John McDonald 

John McLean 

John Mcintosh (son to Lynvulgie) 

John Mcintosh of Bain 

James MacKay 

David Clark 
Alexander Clark 

Donald Clark 

Joseph Burgess 

Donald Clark junior 

Archibald McBain 

Alexander Munro 

William Munro 

John Cuthbert 



THE SEEDING 31 

" All of the settlement who could write their 
names," says the manuscript. 

I have written these words with some pardonable 
pride, for the first signature is that of a direct an- 
cestor, and others of the same blood follow. 

To these men fortune had been niggardly in her 
favors. Pro'scribed, landless, and exiled through 
participation in the " Stuart Rising " of 1715, they 
had brought to a Western world little but sturdy 
strength and steadfast hearts. But, besides these, 
they gave to their General and his associates an un- 
questioning loyalty and affection. Their letter ad- 
dressed to him was issued with no hope of influencing 
or even retarding the final decision, for they well 
knew the weight of pressure exerted by the older and 
richer settlements on or near the Savannah River. 
Rather was it the declaration of a Creed and a warn- 
ing to the children who might follow them ; for in 
Savannah they had heard, at convivial meetings, and 
at home gatherings, the frequent toast of — 

" The one thing needful: may we soon have it" 

— drunk deep, with its approving cheers. Augusta 
and all outlying posts were of the same mind. But 
to these Scotchmen of Darien and Mcintosh it was 
given to see far into the coming years. As Arnold 
phrases it, — they saw " straight " into the cloudy 
future, and beheld the coveted African undergoing 
a metamorphosis as strange and as baneful as any 



32 THE SEEDING 

that is told in the pages of Ovid. They saw far, 
for at that era England herself countenanced and 
approved of the desired traffic ; and the North, 
whence even now, after a lapse of near fifty years 
can still be heard the faint vibration and echo of 
the victorious shouts of '65, was eager to furnish 
men, money and ships for its prosecution, and a 
Phillips, a Parker, or a Garrison would have had no 
hearing — no, not even in Boston itself. 

On December 29, 1749, the decision was made. 
As I have said, the result was sure, and by a vote 
of a few hundred men Georgia, with its broad boun- 
daries-to-be — from the mountains of Tennessee to 
the ocean, and from the Savannah westward to the 
Mississippi — ceased to be a province from which by 
the very terms of its charter African slavery was 
forever debarred. The trustees of the province 
resigned their commissions and offices, and the gov- 
ernment passed directly to his Majesty George the 
Second, who appointed Colonel Reynolds, of H. M. 
S., Royal Governor of the last province or colony 
that England was fated to make in the limits of the 
Republic of the United States. 

Imagination itself may be startled in considering 
the possibilities, to province and future republic, 
had the " Creed of New Inverness " found faith in 
Savannah. 

I have dreamed that, with a State whose boun- 
daries were the Mississippi, the mountains of Ten- 
nessee and the ocean, — every acre of whose 140,000 



THE SEEDING 83 

square miles being pledged by its birth charter to 
free institutions and free labor, — no soil would have 
been found in which to sow the seed from which was 
to spring sectionalism, division and a " Lost Cause." 
But it was not to be. From the hands of those 
whose names I have cited, and from others with 
like hopes and like beliefs, was the grain cast on the 
land from which was to spring 

" The harvest," and 
" The scourge :^^ 

— a harvest foretold in the very infancy of the 
colony. 



II 

THE HARVEST 

In the preceding chapter has been told the result 
of the stiniggle between the spirit in which the Colony 
of Georgia was conceived, and the utilitarian beliefs 
and desires of a majority of her citizens. 

At the head of the winning party were the names 
of Whitfield, Habersham and Thomas Stephens. 
Leading the slender band who lost we find John Mohr 
INIcIntosh of New Inverness and the Reverend Mr. 
Bolzius of Ebenezer. 

I have told the story so that any descendant of 
this fragment of very far-seeing men might, if he so 
choose, point to the date 1739 and say: "In that 
year my grandsire wrote, signed and published, so 
far as I know, the first protest against the use of 
Africans as slaves, issued in the history of the New 
World, and that every count in the indictment as 
drawn by him has been made good by the verdict of 
years." 

To the critic of expressions and sentiments that 
have been expressed and uttered I answer tliat the 
year of our Lord 1909 has proved the truth of the 
arguments addressed to the authorities of 1739, and 
that now their children's children, after " times and 

34 



THE HARVEST 35 

times " of contrary belief, are forced to recognize the 
evils that have followed the ultimate decision. 

In truth, Georgia at that date was suffering from 
what James Habersham called a " mirasmus " or 
weakness, like to that of a man who sinks into leth- 
argy from the want of food. Give to him bread or 
meat, and in a week his natural health and strength 
would return ; administer a stimulant such as brandy 
or nitroglycerine, and a transitory quickening of 
heart action alone would follow and with it but 
a temporary strength. Man's life is measured by 
months ; a nation's, by half centuries. To the 
d3ang colony was given, not sturdy emigrants or 
food, but the stimulant of African slave labor. The 
tokens of a quickened energy soon appeared, and 
the citizens of Savannah openly declared that, with 
the granting of " the one thmg needful " had come 
pei-manent prosperity. 

The natural resources of the country were de- 
veloped. Planters from Virginia and the Carolinas, 
having already exhausted the virgin fertility of 
their farms, came in numbers, bringing money and 
slaves to till the fresh lands of Georgia. They 
bought up the smaller grants of land and consoli- 
dated them into large plantations. The Puritan 
migration into St. John's parish flowed in, and this 
united Darien or New Inverness (until then a mili- 
tary outpost) with Savannah, the capital. Labor 
being supplied, exports and trade sprang into being 
and all went well and " merrily as wedding bells." 



S6 THE HARVEST 

On the Altamaha the Scotch emigrants of 1735 
and their descendants held almost exclusive pos- 
session of the islands and rich river lands, while the 
pine lands of the interior had been granted in a great 
part to that flotsam of rather undesirable people 
which is found always to accompany any tide of 
immigration. 

It might be thought that the strong opposition 
shown by the people of Darien and Ebenezer to the 
recent radical change in the laws and policy of the 
province would have manifested itself by their slow 
adoption, and, at least, to have affected the habits 
and life of those communities. But in this belief 
the power of the temptation would be underestimated. 
Their consciences being quieted by previous public 
declarations openly and boldly expressed, when now 
to the sanction of law was added the example of 
neighbors, accompanied by the natural craving for 
an easier life with quickly acquired wealth, it would 
be too much to expect faith to an abstract principle ; 
and, as early as 1760, we see the county passing 
rapidly from the conditions that had marked its 
first creation (which had been that of a military out- 
post, receiving its orders direct from the Governor- 
General, and with no representation in council) to 
that of a prosperous and fast-growing agricultural 
and cattle-raising community. 

In this they were greatly aided and encouraged by 
Spain's cession of the East and West Floridas to 
Great Britain. By the terms of the Treaty of 1763 



THE HARVEST 37 

Great Britain not only received this grant, but also 
established royal governments and garrisons at St. 
Augustine and at Pensacola, thus removing any fear 
of Spanish hostility and adding security to the new 
form of property. I would here remark that this 
treaty and cession displaced Frederica from its mili- 
tary position as a fortress, necessary in time of war, 
and eventually brought about its practical evacua- 
tion and reduction in course of time to one of the 
" dead cities " of Georgia. 

The settlement of Darien, or Mcintosh County, 
as in future I shall call it, had been peculiar. 
" Stevens " says it consisted of 110 free men and 
servants, with whom 50 women and children were 
allowed. All were picked men, the largest number 
from the glen of Strathl'dean, nine miles from In- 
verness, Scotland. They were commanded by their 
own officers or chiefs, most respectably connected, 
and, besides them, there came a number of MacKays, 
Baillies and Cuthberts. All settled either at Darien 
or Frederica, St. Simon. Mr. Spalding says, 
" From 1735 to 1740, 300 came to Georgia and 
more after 1753." And Mr. Spalding's grandfather 
was William Mcintosh, eldest son of John Mohr 
Mcintosh, the leader in the emigration of 1735, and 
William Mcintosh was a lad of fourteen at the land- 
ing in Georgia, whilst his wife was Mary MacKay, 
a daughter of Donald MacKay, and bom in Scot- 
land before the year 1735. 

In the seven years of the Revolutionary struggle 



38 THE HARVEST 

Mcintosh County suffered, not from its occupation 
by the regular armies, but greatly from the preda- 
tory incursions of partisans of either side. McGirt 
plundered, burned, stole and murdered in the cause 
of the Crown. Paddy Carr and Nephew flogged, 
murdered and carried off in the name of the State or 
Committee of Safety. The people were much divided 
in sentiment. The Mclntoshes were all ardent pa- 
triots. James Spalding and George Mcintosh en- 
deavored to remain neutral, or rather conservative, 
— which in such times is always the most dangerous 
course. 

George Mcintosh, direct ancestor of many noted 
families, such as the Clinches, Sadlers and others, 
resided at Rice-Hope, Mcintosh County. His home 
was burned by Nephew, his negroes run off and sold, 
his bams and property destroyed. A letter from 
him written July 3, 1777, reads (like words from 
some old Scottish border story) : 

" They have taken possession of my estate, de- 
stroyed my crops on the ground by turning their 
horses on to them ; killed and drove off my stock 
of every kind ; broke open my house, bam and cellar ; 
plundered and carried off everything of value they 
could find, wantonly committing every act of waste 
and destruction." 

Two days after he writes: " I am just informed 
one of my most trusty negroes, on my indigo place, 
has been cruelly whipped until he died in the rope, 
because he could not tell my hiding place," and 



THE HARVEST 39 

adds : " Excuse this handwriting, for it is done on 
my knee, and under a tree in my own woods." 

The storehouses of James Spalding at Sunbury 
were rifled, plundered and burned, his dwelling house 
likewise, and everything of value scattered to the 
winds ; all the accumulations of industry and thrift 
were engulfed and destroyed by roving bands of 
tories or so-called loyalists. 

By reference to pages 78 and 82 of Marbury's 
Digest of 1784, one may learn the number and 
names of the families whose persons were attainted 
and whose property Avas confiscated, and know how 
great was the division in political belief. It was 
Governor Gwinnet's approval of the treatment of 
George Mcintosh that led to a correspondence with 
Colonel Lachlan Mcintosh, brother of George, which 
terminated in a duel, in which Gwinnet lost his life. 
The meeting took place on Hutchinson's Island. 
The Governor lived but an hour. Mcintosh was 
thought to be fatally wounded, but recovered ; was 
transferred from Georgia to serve under General 
Washington at Valley Forge ; was promoted to a 
brigadier generalship of the Continental Anny ; was 
given a separate command in western Virginia ; 
conducted himself so as to win the personal esteem of 
his great chief, and lived to receive General Wash- 
ington as his guest in the home to which he had 
retired, two doors from the corner of State and 
Bull streets, in Savannah. 

Peace came in 1783, and, with it, were resumed 



40 THE HARVEST 

neglected pursuits and industries. The State re- 
warded the returning soldiers of the Revolution with 
generous grants of vacant or confiscated lands. 
Upon these money could be raised. The soil was 
new and fertile, while labor could be cheaply pur- 
chased from Northern traders, more especially at 
Charleston, where a credit of two and three years 
was extended, usually for two-thirds of the pur- 
chase money; and by 1810 the scars of strife and 
heated passions were replaced by the signs of pros- 
perity. 

By now Mcintosh County had lost her distinctive 
Scotch habits and traditions, and, in social and po- 
litical manner and belief, exactly resembled her sister 
seaboard counties of Chatham, Camden and Glynn. 
It was at this period and in the year immediately 
prior and succeeding that the county and the State 
presented its best and most interesting features. 
The " system " of slavery was yet in its comparative 
infancy, presenting none of its worse sides. A genu- 
ine affection existed between the master and those 
who were then more serfs to the land than slaves ; 
their value was not then computed in dollars, but 
in labor contributed toward the building up and 
improvement of the home. They were rather an ap- 
pendage than an asset to the family, — an asset not 
to be reckoned until, by death or gift, it passed 
to a son or daughter. Fresh from Africa, they 
lived in greater safety of person and comfort in life 
than in their soon-forgotten native land. In the 



THE HARVEST 41 

slow, forward evolution of the savage the thought 
of personal right had not yet been conceived. No 
contrasting of their lot with the fortunes of the 
other race gave birth to moody contemplation. The 
goal that marked the station where freedom of body 
and mind was desirable or to be achieved was yet 
far distant; and the character of the men to whom 
they were brought nearest was, in general, kind and 
just, requiring no extreme hard labor and granting 
indulgences that greatly mitigated the severities of 
the written law. 

In manner, mind, and bearing the planter and 
gentleman of that day exhibited a constant cour- 
tesy to equal and inferior. They were men of wide 
education and often of travel and experience. The 
fatal " environment " had not yet poisoned spirit, 
heart or action. They were distinguished by a uni- 
versal desire for the upbuilding of the country and 
for love of the Union. To a certain extent they 
were overbearing in opinion, for the habit of com- 
mand asserted itself in their mental as well as their 
daily life, and, with it, a dogmatism not open to 
argument, 

I have, in this rapid sketch of events long passed, 
reached near to the date of 1843 or 1845, at which 
time my memories of conversations and of events 
transpiring come into use, and in future I shall 
write as a looker-on, and not as one telling of a 
game that he has heard was once played. 

The rich lands that bordered the Altamaha, with 



4£ THE HARVEST 

its adjacent islands, had been acquired by a small 
number of families, twenty or thirty in number, 
some by this time possessed of large wealth, others 
of smaller means. They were people of birth, posi- 
tion, education, and refinement in manner and 
thought ; and beside them, on the less fertile por- 
tions, were settled, it might be twice their number, 
men of smaller properties but people of fair educa- 
tion and in comfortable circumstances of life, gen- 
erally small planters, cattlemen or storekeepers, own- 
ers of but few slaves. And, lastly, we must count 
an overwhelming plurality of ignorant and poverty- 
stricken whites dwelling in the backwoods, and 
differing only in their degrees of utter shiftless- 
ness. 

In a society so formed, and mingled in such pro- 
portions, it was inevitable that this poorest, but 
in a democratic state, through its number, most pow- 
erful, class, should sink into a state of dependence 
upon those who, possessing the richer lands and 
greatest wealth, were able in time of need to offer 
the most effectual aid and help. There was little 
solicitation — by an almost tacit agreement the role 
of patron was assumed by one, and that of client 
adopted by the other. Equally unspoken was the 
promise of political support. That went without 
saying, and, with that, there followed a rule of the 
minority, a minority which was represented entirely 
by the wealthy families of the disti-ict and which 
was immensely the superior in intelligence, educa- 



THE HARVEST 43 

tion and foresight. In South Carolina this result 
was attained by virtue of the State's constitution, 
a freehold of $1500 being there a requisite for eligi- 
bility to a seat in the upper house of the " Assem- 
bly " ; and, again, the number of representatives in 
the districts was not fixed by the number of white 
citizens, but by the amount of property returned. 
In Georgia, in theory a purely democratic govern- 
ment, the law I have before cited — the inexorable 
law of environment — issued its fiat, and, in practice, 
a minority represented always by the wealthier class 
of citizenship ruled and governed the State. The 
same goal was reached, but in one by a roadway not 
blazed out by the written words of the constitu- 
tion. 

The character of men whose lives were spent in 
such surroundings, whose horizon was bounded by 
the neighboring fields and forests, whose self-esteem 
was nourished by a daily companionship and as- 
sociation with either a dependent of his own color 
or of one of another race to whom his simple word 
was law itself, without appeal, became enervated, in 
many instances, by the absence of any necessity for 
personal exertion ; and while to a limited number 
leisure and the secured provision of the future in- 
duced the cultivation of literature, science or art, 
yet such studies or pursuits were seldom prosecuted 
save as accomplishments, and rarely was an acknowl- 
edged leadership sought or striven for. " Eating 
the lotus, day by day," the serious ends of life were 



44 THE HARVEST 

ignored, and it is in the marked difference between 
the youth of the last half century and those of the 
preceding years that the good resulting from the 
new conditions of life is most apparent. The one 
was content with the narrow limits that bounded 
their natural, mental and physical visions, and were 
blind to the progress of the world. By them the 
customs, manners and habits of their own little 
neighborhood and county were esteemed and cher- 
ished as representing the very highest in type. 
Life was to them, too often — certainly by the men — 
regarded as a term of being, during which as much 
of pleasure as possible should be concentrated. Their 
lives might be intemperate, even vicious, but only in 
the rarest cases would open condemnation be in- 
curred, and seldom, very seldom, would ostracism 
follow. 

On the other hand, look ! — under the kind though 
hard hand of poverty — nurse to near all the youth 
of the South for the last forty years — see how we 
find self-reliance replacing unfounded self-esiteem, 
industry in lieu of indolence and self-indulgence; 
while, always, vice or intemperance is followed by 
a quick condemnation, with the doors of all repu- 
table society closed to him who by his own acts 
has forfeited both his birthright and his oppor- 
tunities. And often in happier cases, though the 
stem law of necessity has left little time for the 
lighter graces of the salon or drawing-room, are 
we forced to recognize a transmigrated or inherited 



THE HARVEST 45 

grace of speech and manner, with a courage in the 
expression of opinion, combined with a courtesy to 
all, which had marked the characters of the men 
of the earlier date. 

The home life of these owners of generally large 
plantations was delightful; hospitality was univer- 
sal, and to be the guest of one family ensured con- 
stant invitations to others. Courtesy, one to the 
other, was greatly in evidence in speech and de- 
meanor. Indeed, the " code duello " had long is- 
sued its decree, that the slightest deviation from a 
studied etiquette demanded quick reparation, and 
that to women was due double caution in speech and 
approach. The mode of entertainment was lavish, 
and, though in somewhat of a " castle-racket " or- 
der, had yet, to every visitor, the subtle charm of 
being made to feel that in his stay he was conferring 
a favor and not in receipt of one. To this there 
was added a constant change in the company, for 
in some houses the procession of incoming and out- 
going guests was continuous. 

An aunt of mine has said to me that, when a 
young lady in her father's house, she scarcely re- 
membered sitting down to the dinner table with less 
than twenty-four. And I have often been told of 
the gentleman and his wife, who, being asked to 
dine at a residence on St. Simon, found that during 
the meal a boat had been sent to Darien, fifteen 
miles distant, for their luggage, and that so much 
pleased were host, hostess and guests with one an- 



46 THE HARVEST 

other, that the stay was prolonged until two chil- 
dren had been bom to the visiting couple — the last 
of whom was duly baptized John Couper . 

Emerson has said, in an essay on Intellect, that 
" Every man finds his curiosity inflamed concerning 
the modes of living and thinking of other men, and 
especially of those classes whose minds have not been 
subdued by the drill of a school education." It is 
in my conviction of the truth of this observation 
that I shall find apology for an attempt to place on 
record something that may show the habits and 
character of that African race which had been trans- 
ported and sold by foreign and Northern traders 
to the residents of the Georgia coasts. 

A race docile, obedient and aff^ectionate, especially 
to the youth of a family, identifying themselves with 
grotesque readiness and sincerity to the standing 
and wealth of their respective owners, and loyal to 
the very name ; possessed of the strongest local at- 
tachment to places and surroundings, yet given by 
a kind Providence a calm and philosophical power 
of accepting the most radical changes in life without 
comment, complaint, or even show of feeling: — it 
was as though, deep in their hearts, laid fatalism, 
as the true creed of their race. In the soughing of 
the lofty pines, when no wind blew, they had heard, 
caught to heart, and retained the never-ceasing ad- 
monition of " To wait. To await " ; and by that 
counsel they shaped their lives, with what, to the 
careless eye, was sometimes indifference and even 



THE HARVEST 47 

cheerfulness — with what I should call a " mens aequa 
in ardwis " they met or welcomed the varying for- 
tunes that came with the changing years. 

In the county of which I write their burden was, 
in general, less than elsewhere. Public opinion 
frowned on an unkind master, and self-interest 
prompted and, in a measure, enforced sufficient food, 
clothing and shelter. The " task " system was uni- 
versal, and with it came freedom for a considerable 
portion of each day. The great wrong, the abso- 
lute obliteration of every personal right, gave little 
trouble to those who never thought, and they were, 
seemingly, perfectly content with a life in which all 
physical wants were provided, since neither imagin- 
ation nor aspiration craved a higher and different 
lot. But twice in my life have I known " The 
Spectre " to which I have alluded to appear, per- 
vert justice, silence, speech, stifle even thought and, 
after a brief day's reign, vanish and disappear; and 
in one case the provocation was very great. In gen- 
eral, both races made honest efforts " To do their 
duty in that state of life in which it had pleased 
God to call them." 

To a Rousseau, a thinker, and most assuredly to 
the dreamer — " who loved, not God, but his fellow- 
man " — this apathy and contentment with what ex- 
isted may have been the saddest and most hopeless 
mental picture shown in the shifting scenes of the 
System. To the unreflecting mind and to those 
directly interested, it appeared the strongest argu- 



48 THE HARVEST 

ment and proof in defense. Each person must judge 
for him or herself; so much depends upon the ends 
in life to be desired or sought to be attained. For 
myself, I know not in what grade I should place a 
soul devoid of aspiration, with imagination — the one 
gift that brings us akin to the gods — dwarfed in its 
power to the mere bodily wants of the present. 

On Butler's Island and Hampton Point were con- 
centrated near one thousand of the African race, 
composing nearly one-fourth the slave population of 
the county. 

Those of the Butler estate were governed by laws 
more arbitrary than elsewhere enforced. By their 
owners' orders no intercourse with the neighboring 
plantations was permitted. The whole estate was 
made into a closed district, a self-providing and 
working colony. The stronger of both sexes labored 
in the production of rice and cotton. Others were 
employed in the manufacture of articles needful for 
the support and comfort of the whole. Forges and 
smith shops furnished the greater part of the plan- 
tation tools. Carpenters and boatbuilding docks 
supplied both houses and means of transportation. 
Tanneries and shoe shops gave the footwear. Caps 
and hats were knitted and plaited by the older men 
and women and the children, whilst a number of 
the superannuated were kept constantly patching 
and mending garments that otherwise would have 
been cast aside. The language spoken by these 
members and descendants of many varying tribes 



THE HARVEST 49 

was absolutely unintelligible to one not long con- 
versant with them. In their training no attention 
at all had been paid to morals, religion or to the 
improvement of their minds ; industry and thrift 
had been inculcated, but every sign of independence 
or personality in character was checked and dis- 
couraged, and, in many ways, this large estate rep- 
resented some of the worse features of the " System" 
especially so since there alone was the immense in- 
fluence of the sight-companionship and example of 
the superior race altogether lost, and by and 
through their isolation all imitation — the germ in 
general of every mental improvement, as well as of 
the bettering of bodily habits — was neither known 
nor felt.* 

Strange to say and contradictory to the theory 
under which I write, here, where absenteeism was 
greatest, loyalty, affection and pride in their own- 
er's name and wealth was greatest: it seemed as 
though the very infrequent and brief visits of master 
and mistress had ended in the deifying of them in 
the hearts of this simple people. So long had they 
been indoctrinated with the creed, " To a Butler 
they owed all things, even life itself," and that noth- 
ing came to them but by the gift of master and 
mistress, that they lifted those two high in their 

* In 1866, the property passed to Mrs. Frances Butler Leigh, 
wife of the Dean of Hereford Cathedral, England. A church 
was built and regular evening worship was held by the Dean. 



50 THE HARVEST 

hearts, as the one power absolute, not to be gain- 
said in the world as they knew it ; and, in a measure, 
thus they remain to this day — to respect and honor 
all who bear in their veins one drop of the Butler 
blood. 

Even now, in 1909, were Alice Butler or Owen 
Wister to meet a daughter of the Angus, Alexander, 
or Bleach families — all noted colored foremen of 
the estate — it would be in this wise: Jane, Chloe 
or Phillis, as it might be, upon seeing the approach 
of " one of the family,^' would slowly advance to 
within three paces, her head held erect, with eyes 
cast down ; then with lowered head sweep, with 
bended knee, a deep curtsy to the very ground; 
then rise, with smiling eyes and outstretched hand 
to touch my lady's fingers. 

An instructive contrast could be drawn between 
the mode of life enforced on Butler's and that fol- 
lowed on the Sapelo Island property. 

On the first discipline was supreme, the work con- 
stant, not always very arduous, but unceasing. Ev- 
ery step toward individuality, self-reliance or in- 
dependence was repressed and checked. " By the 
law of the plantation, thou shalt live," was the or- 
der ever inculcated and reiterated. " The master 
will give what is needed — what is not given is not to 
be desired," was early taught to the young by the 
old. 

On the other island the labor exacted was light, 
not, in general, amounting to more than six or seven 



THE HARVEST 51 

hours. To each head of a family a certain acreage 
of land was allotted, and he was expected to pro- 
vide from his industry and the natural resources 
of the island many additions to the weekly rations 
which were issued. The raising of poultry, pigs 
and garden produce was encouraged, and to a few 
favored families cattle and horses were permitted ; 
the absolute personal possession was guaranteed and 
inviolable. 

The young ladies of the " House " gave instruc- 
tion in the elements of religion ; the Sunday exercises 
for the children and such of the older ones who 
wished to attend, were never omitted, though in 
practice little but the decalogue and fervent hymn 
singing was found to suit the m.inds and taste of 
the hearers. Mr. Spalding had pondered deeply 
upon the dangers to the Union as threatened by the 
" System." A slaveholder himself by inheritance he 
had not been blind to evils foretold by his own 
grandfather. He had seen the growth of new and 
free States in rapid recurrence. His convictions and 
hopes leant, not toward the ending, but to the ameli- 
oration of the conditions of servitude and the await- 
ing of events. In early life, when a member of the 
State legislature, he had introduced and pressed the 
enactment of a law which should make the slave ir- 
movable from the estate to which he was born, 
through any process of sale. He thus hoped to con- 
tract, in a measure, the separating of families. I 
need hardly say that this rather impossible but hu- 



52 THE HARVEST 

mane law received little encouragement from the then 
members of the Georgia legislature, and met no 
favor even from his fellow-citizens. 

He strove, in the management of the large num- 
ber owned by him, to teach reliance on themselves, 
for every improvement in their physical wants and 
condition. He gave them the means, the tools and 
the leisure in which to improve their own houses or 
cottages. He had every confidence in their loyalty, 
so much so that, in 181S, when a British fleet lay off 
Sapelo Island he applied to the Governor for arms 
and received 80 muskets, with which he armed and 
drilled his negro men, saying that from the want of 
depth of water, only a boat attack could be car- 
ried out and that if that was attempted " he and Bu- 
Allah ^ [his slave foreman] would make a good ac- 
count of them." No landing was made on Sapelo 
Island, though on St. Simon's almost constant at- 
tacks, with great losses of property, were suf- 
fered. The result of this training has been shown 
by the ease with which the transition was made from 
slavery to freedom by the colored people belonging 
to this island. On the one, self-reliance had been 
taught ; on the other, an absolute dependence on the 
master. 

In the preceding pages I have sought more to 

1 He died leaving twelve sons and seven daughters. He 
kept all the plantation " Acts " in Arabic, and was buried 
with his Koran and fraying sheep skin. Three times each day 
he faced the East and called upon Allah. 



THE HARVEST 53 

portray the development of a people, than to tell 
the events which would have been a history of the 
State. It is my belief that the vsurroundings, oc- 
cupations and associations of men and also of 
women, enforce the adoption of certain uniform 
usages and habits of life, which are so permanently 
impressed and stamped on the mind as eventually 
to become the cause, or rather the creator of a race 
distinctive in its type ; mentally as well as phys- 
ically, in faith, as in body. The type is the product 
of the habit, and the habit the legitimate offspring 
of a long-continued environment. 

In Georgia the existing system of labor made it 
sure that all industry would be of an agricultural 
nature, for its form was unsuited to the prosecution 
of mineral, manufacturing or commercial interests ; 
it discouraged the foreign immigration which might 
have entered into such pursuits, by forcing a com- 
petition, or rather a comparison, repugnant to the 
ruling sentiment of the new settler. In the mechani- 
cal trades it was almost prohibitory to the skilled 
artisan, since the employer, always a planter, could 
usually find the required craftsman among his own 
laborers. With no foreign immigration the growth 
in population was greatly retarded and limited to 
the natural increase, to which should be added a 
number, by removals from the Carolinas and Vir- 
ginia, whose citizens were already seeking new and 
unworn lands. The increase of wealth, being solely 
due to the sale of the crude products of the soil, and 



54 THE HARVEST 

not to their enhanced value after manufacture, was 
slow. Nor did it require or demand the creating of 
any great center of distribution. An accessible sea- 
port only being needed, the most convenient and 
nearest was selected, and thus St. Mary's, Bruns- 
wick, Darien and Savannah divided the meager 
profits derived from the transshipment of the staple 
crops of the State. Communication being difficult, 
for not until 1840 were railroads in operation, the 
interchange of Ideas, opinions and views was equally 
slow, and the mass of the people lived for much the 
larger part of their lives in communities more or 
less Isolated one from the other, each having its 
own mode of life and, in a large measure, of thought. 
The members of each community were busy In the 
same Industry, with every dollar that they possessed 
invested In that same industry, and in their minds 
that occupation assumed a supreme Importance not 
warranted by its nature. It was this that gave life 
and authority to the phrase " King Cotton will or- 
der It," a monarch who, it was said, would dictate 
a peace between the two warring sections, sections 
divided by a deep and impassable chasm of senti- 
ment and faith. 

In comparison with the Western, Eastern and 
Northern States, Georgia had made slow progress 
in the march to wealth and population. In the one 
hundred and twenty-eight years that had elapsed 
between 1732 and 1861, her largest city had only 
attained to a population of twenty-five thousand. 



THE HARVEST 55 

Not one rolling mill, foundry of capacity, or ore 
furnace testified to the richness of the mineral belt. 
No coal mines had been opened in her mountain re- 
gion. A few small cotton factories, with perhaps a 
little more than one thousand miles of railway, 
alone bore witness to a growing spirit of enterprise 
and of expansion into internal improvements. The 
pine forests were scarcely touched, and the placid 
river as it ran beneath the boughs of the great trees 
seemed in its murmur to whisper a reproach at this 
neglect of its offered free transportation to the mar- 
kets of the world. The exports representing the 
gross income of the owners of land and personal 
property were comprised in a total of 500,000 bales 
of cotton and 500,000 bushels of rice of a value 
roughly computed of eighteen to twenty millions. 
The imports I am unable to state, but their volume 
was not great, the general habit of the people tend- 
ing toward the use of home products. 

No large fortunes, or, to be more correct, not 
many large fortunes could be accumulated in mer- 
cantile business, for as late as I860 the State num- 
bered as citizens but 521,000 whites, with the ad- 
dition of 385,000 colored laborers. For the sup- 
port and maintenance of the colored, othenvise than 
what was produced by themselves, only about 
twelve dollars per year was required, and for at 
least one-half of the white race but little more. The 
patronage, therefore, of those engaged in merchan- 
dising was limited in one class in numbers, and in 



56 THE HARVEST 

the other and larger class by their poverty and in- 
ability to gratify their desires. 

At the close of every year the planter living at 
home simply, but abundantly, with, from his com- 
parative isolation, few temptations to extravagance, 
often found he had money to his credit ready to 
invest. There being within the limits of the State 
no openings in other industries, it was only natural 
that the new investment should be made in more land 
and more labor. It was this constant re-investment 
of the profits of an industry into one of a like na- 
ture, that produced from the similarity of occupa- 
tions, like usages and like habits of life, and the 
recreations as well as the labors being similar, a 
mental standard was conceived by which all opinion 
and excellence was measured and contrasted, and 
the type of the better classes of society was thus 
vivified into being. Travel being slow and costly, 
there was little intermixing of sections. Books were 
freely bought, and education among the true planter- 
class was even better than now. Reading was more 
general and of a more solid nature than at present, 
for fiction had not yet assumed the task of teaching 
political, theological and even legal truths. 

All material interests being centered in one form 
of property, the deterioration or loss of which meant 
absolute ruin to each and every one, the right to 
hold that form of property became sacred in the 
eyes of all, and any criticism became blasphemy. 
The dependent, or " client " as I have called him, 



THE HARVEST 67 

of this planter-class was taught, and believed in his 
heart, that any change that might come would lower 
him to the level of the subject-race, and it was this 
conviction which gave bone and sinew to the armies 
of the Confederacy, recruited in the ma,in from 
those who had nothing to gain by the victories of 
the South. The " guarantee of the Constitution " 
became a cry by which foresight and expediency were 
routed. Both Jefferson and Madison lost their 
power over men's hearts by presuming to point to 
dangers they foresaw, and the men and the women 
true to the teachings of their lives, and of their ma- 
terial property interests, called all history and the 
Bible to the stand as witnesses in their behalf. The 
habit of command not only in one form, but of dom- 
inancy over three-fourths of the people, gave per- 
sonal dignity and courage, and with these there 
came grace of person and deportment, for grace is 
essentially an absence of embarrassment, and none 
of them I refer to could feel diffidence at the pres- 
ence of an acknowledged inferior. Generosity was 
usual and common, for it is in the bestowing on oth- 
ers that our own sense of superiority is most subtly 
appealed to. In the seaboard counties of Georgia 
the universal application of the task system to all 
labor gave more leisure to the employer than where, 
as in the upper and middle parts of the State, the 
hours of industry were regulated by the sun. 

The forests and streams were filled with game and 
fish, and the life, both indoor and outdoor, must have 



58 THE HARVEST 

closely resembled that of the English gentry, the 
amusements being much the same ; but the " tone " 
and what was deemed correct in manner, to and 
with the female sex, was almost puritan in word and 
deed. A Squire Western as painted by Fielding 
would have been driven from the county. Physical 
accomplishments appealed stronger to general ad- 
miration than scholarly acquirements, except in 
oratory, which even in the most primitive nations al- 
ways has had a supremacy. To be an accom- 
plished horseman, or a sure shot with rifle or gun, 
was to gain more admirers than to be a lover of 
books or an acknowledged scholar. An agreeable 
companion and a good raconteur and one who graced 
both drawing-room and dancing-hall was oftener 
met with, than a man devoted to and eminent in 
scientific or professional life. By many families 
cards were abhorred and considered as conducive to 
bad habits. The cultivation of music by men was 
thought to be eff'eminate, but in the other sex ap- 
propriate and to be desired. Two vices only, as I 
remember, ostracized a man forever from associa- 
tion with his neighbors and compeers. To maliciously 
lie, or to show any symptoms of cowardice, was to 
brand himself as unworthy of mention, much less of 
personal intercourse. 

To siun up. The governing and higher classes of 
Georgia were men with sound hearts, minds and 
bodies ; hardy of constitution and brave, truthful 
and frank of manner; generous and graceful in de- 



THE HARVEST 59 

portment; courteous save when one subject was 
mentioned; educated and refined in mode of life; 
somewhat arrogant and disposed to walk the world 
with the Irishman's chip — in this case a very black 
chip — on the shoulder and dare the united world to 
touch, or even speak of it. 

There was genuine love for the Union. Not even 
the unmeasured devotion borne by South Carolina 
for John C. Calhoun, not the reverence and respect 
felt throughout Georgia for George M. Troup, 
could secure a working majority in either of those 
States to favor a dissolution of the Union. Not un- 
til 1860 was that majority attained, and then only 
by a wide-spread conviction that an absolute and 
entire change of a system — a system in which and 
upon which every pecuniary interest of the States 
rested — would surely follow the continued confed- 
eration. 

There is no error more prevalent, or more com- 
monly believed, than that the ownership of slaves 
insured very large profits from the capital thus 
invested ; yet it is true beyond controversy that the 
net dividends received from money so placed were 
comparatively small. 

A relative of my own, of most distinguished abil- 
ity in agricultural pursuits and who had for fifty 
years administered as trustee a very large estate, 
has remarked to me that, as trustee, for forty years 
he had had in charge a large block of Schuylkill 
River bonds issued by the city of Philadelphia and 



60 THE HARVEST 

for the same number of years 600 slaves and 1500 
acres of rice lands, and that the estate of Hamilton 
had received more from the bonds than from the 
Georgia investments. 

The records as left by him do not quite bear out 
tliis statement but approach very nearly to it, and 
we have to remember that the factor of deterioration 
might be very present in the mind of the speaker 
and yet not be apparent in the book accounts. And, 
again, the income was not constant but subject to 
the fluctuations due to seasons and prices. 

I submit a page of tables of expense and amount 
of sales as examples : 

Long-Staple Cotton Plantation. 



Average of Expense Account and Amoimt of Sales 
Hamilton Plantation^ St. Simon. 



Investment. 






120 slaves; value — 


$ 54,000 




800 acres land, 


16,000 




stock, horses, mules, 


2,000 




boats, flats, &c.. 


2,000 


$74,000 



Average sales of Cotton, &c., $ 5,277 

Expense Account. 

Support of 120 slaves: $2,200. 



THE HARVEST 61 

This amount covers clothing, 
shoes, blankets, food other than 
there raised on plantation, phy- 
sician's bills and miscellaneous, 
and includes overseer and man- 
ager; the average for 40 years. 

less expense, $2,200. 

less taxes, l62. $2,362 



$2,915 
The valuation of slaves was 
placed at $450 per capita. The 
books show an annual increase 
over the death rate of 4: at 
$450, 1,800 



Total — (a little more than 6 per 

cent)— $4,715 $4,715 

Again the same distinguished manager of great 
planting interests gives an itemized statement, 
showing the value in 1858 of lands, buildings, stock 
and slaves owned by a part of the Hamilton estate, 
in which a total of $271,000.00 is reached, the 372 
slaves are valued at $350.00 each, the 800 acres of 
diked and banked rice lands at $75.00 per acre, the 
buildings, stock and general plant, at what they 
cost. None of these valuations can be considered 
too high. The whole 800 acres he states will be 
planted, from which he expects a crop of 36,880 



62 THE HARVEST 

bushels, which should bring, after deducting freight 
and commission, 80 cents per bushel ; a gross revenue 
of $29,440.00. 

In another and more confidential paper, he places 
the cost of maintaining, clothing, shoeing, blanket- 
ing and providing food not raised on the planta- 
tion, and medical attendance at $15.00 per year to 
each slave, 

Three hundred and seventy-two slaves $ 5580.00 
Salary of himself, as manager ($3500), and 

an overseer ($1500) 5000.00 

Taxes, Insurance, etc 1000.00 

Miscellaneous, Charity, Church etc 300.00 



Total 11880.00 

Balances 17560.00 

not 7% on the sum invested. The bocks show but 
a nominal increase, the births and deaths nearly 
balancing, and we must remember that this estimate 
was made by an exceptionally successful planter, 
having the use of unusually rich lands, and engaged 
in what was thought to be the most lucrative form 
of agriculture, with no debts or incumbrances to 
hamper industry. In these examples are demon- 
strated the truth, that money invested in slave prop- 
erty did not, in the older States, and especially on 
lands long worked, yield large returns, 7% being 
fully the general average. In the new States — in 
parts of Alabama, Mississippi, and the sections bor- 



THE HARVEST 63 

dering the great river, larger profits were secured ; 
too often by methods not warranted by laws that 
should govern the heart and conscience : and so there 
grew up a steady and constant westward migra- 
tion of this form of property. So early as 1838 
Mrs. Fanny Kemble writes " that her husband, Mr. 
Pierce Butler, has thought of removing his large 
force of slaves, to middle Alabama, where he is in- 
formed great sums of money may be made." The 
phosphate beds of Carolina and Florida, the real 
foundation of the present agricultural prosperity, 
were unknown. The acres under cultivation were 
quickly exhausted of their primal fertility, the proc- 
ess of restoration was slow and required the use and 
ownership of large stocks of cattle, with the accom- 
panying expense in capital and land, and thus there 
came a general and almost universal demand for new 
territory and fresher lands. This individual de- 
sire, by consolidation, became a political demand 
that the " Institution " should be received with its 
owners into all the Territories acquired by the Gov- 
ernment, whether it be by cession or purchase — and 
which of a right should be open for settlement to 
every citizen of the United States, with the privilege 
to there transfer any or all property owned by them, 
in whatsoever form that property might be. The 
ordinance of 1787 — adopted by Congress, even be- 
fore the ratification of the Constitution — had long 
previously declared all territory lying north of the 
Ohio River and east of the Mississippi exempt from 



64 THE HARVEST 

this claim. That ordinance had been drawn by 
Mr. Jefferson, and contained the clause " That after 
the year 1800 there shall be neither slavery nor in- 
voluntary servitude in any State or States that may 
be created from the lands lying within the limits 
above mentioned, otherwise than for the punishment 
of crime whereof the party shall have been duly con- 
victed." 

Like the colonists of Georgia in 1739, Indiana 
had in 1803 petitioned Congress to be relieved from 
this anti-slavery ordinance. Three times did she re- 
peat this petition. John Randolph of Roanoke, 
himself a slave owner, had been chairman of the 
committee to whom the petition was referred, and 
in his report recommending a denial to the prayer, 
he said, " That this labor, demonstrably the dearest 
of any, in his and the committee's opinion, was not 
necessary to Indiana, as shown by her sister State 
of Ohio, and that at no distant day Indiana would 
find ample remuneration for a temporary depriva- 
tion." But in 1820, owing to the purchase of the 
Louisiana country, a great extent of fertile land had 
become open to settlement, and it is to be noted that 
it was a territory that, at the time of purchase, 
recognized slavery as the law of the land, and the 
" Institution " as one of long usage within her limits. 
As the country filled rapidly with settlers the ques- 
tion as to the form of constitution to be adopted 
was soon raised, and first upon the admission of the 
Territory of Missouri as a State into the Union. 



THE HARVEST 65 

That State became a member of the Union, with her 
fundamental law allowing the existence of slavery 
within her limits, but by the same Congress a line 
was adopted, known as the " Missouri Compromise 
Line," running westwardly on the parallel of 36 de- 
grees, 80 minutes, and extending to the limits of 
the United States. North of this line, no territory 
was to be admitted into the Union, but with laws 
prohibitory of slavery. South of the line, citizens 
should have entry with their property, and any State 
to be formed of such part, should be admitted into 
the Union, with a constitution that might or might 
not prohibit slavery, as the people of such territory 
" may " choose. 

It was believed that by this memorable enact- 
ment ^ the irreconcilable differences in the faiths 
and beliefs of the two sections had been so adjusted 
and balanced as to remove their cause from future 
legislation. How unfounded was this confidence was 
soon to be shown — in truth, no legislation could keep 
pace with the mar\^elous expansion of the Western 
Country. 

Not until years after the adoption of the 
" Missouri Compromise Line " were the legisla- 
tive halls disturbed by the clamors of sectionalism. 
In 1837 a petition from the State of Vermont, and 
other petitions from various societies and organiza- 
tions, were presented, and introduced into the pro- 
ceedings of the United States Senate, then in ses- 

2 The eflFort was to prevent any controversy on the subject. 



66 THE HARVEST 

slon. These petitions " prayed " for the abolition 
of slavery in the District of Columbia, and pro- 
tested against any resolution or act that might favor 
a future annexation of the Republic of Texas : ex- 
cited and angry members desired and demanded that 
they be returned to their makers, with votes of cen- 
sure. Calmer members reminded their colleagues 
that the right of petition was inalienable and could 
not be denied. After too long a discussion, they were 
laid on the table, never to be acted on, but still 
fruitful of harm, for by them many angry Avords 
had been prompted, and worse still, much bitter feel- 
ing engendered. Not until 1845 was Texas admitted 
into the Union, and in the act of admission is found 
this clause : " Provided that any State, that may 
be formed of any portion of such territory lying 
south of the parallel 36 degrees, 30 minutes, shall 
be admitted into the Union, with laws allowing or 
prohibiting slavery, as the people of such State or 
Territory may choose — and any State lying north 
of said line shall, by its constitution, prohibit slav- 
ery, before admittance into the Union." The great 
area of the new State, capable of providing ample 
limits for the creation of four sovereign States all 
south of the " compromise line," had appealed with 
irresistible force to the leaders of a party anxious to 
increase, perpetuate, and solidify their present con- 
trol of the Federal Government, and not less strongly 
to their constituents covetous of rich and new soil, 
from which greater returns might be reaped by their 



THE HARVEST 67 

" labor." In the admission of Texas the balance 
of senatorial power was for a time shifted, the 
Union being composed of fifteen pro-slavery and 
thirteen free States. The war with Mexico followed 
as a necessary corollary to the annexation, and by 
its successful termination and the expenditure of 
eighteen millions of dollars as purchase money, the 
United States found herself in possession of the 
great domain, and countless square miles embraced 
in the limits of New Mexico and California, an em- 
pire of undiscovered wealth stretching westward to 
the Pacific, a land in which the institution of slav- 
ery had been debarred by the power from which it 
had been ceded and purchased. Not until 1850 was 
the Government to be called on to act upon the ad- 
mission of any State whose limits were within and 
whose lands were a part of this purchase, and in ad- 
dition were south of the compromise boundary line. 
The years between 1845 and 1850 had been filled 
with party strife and rancor. Unable to find any 
solid ground for conflict in any act of the Govern- 
ment, each side sought opportunity to inflame the 
passions of its constituents. Among the most 
harmful measures, were the adoption or attempted 
adoption of " resolutions," resolutions necessarily 
nugatory in themselves since they carried no execu- 
tive force or power, but powerful in furnishing the 
elements of party strife and controversy. On a bill 
appropriating three millions toward the purchase 
of New Mexico and California, David Wilmot of 



68 THE HARVEST 

Pennsylvania had added, " Provided that in no part 
of the territory acquired shall slavery ever be per- 
mitted." The proviso was not adopted and was 
struck off, but its after effects were far reaching 
and cannot be over-estimated. The rejected pro- 
viso became a fire brand with which to spread alarm 
in one section, and a banner under which the theo- 
rists of the North might rally. In the South, State 
conventions were called to consider what measures 
" were necessary to meet the danger threatened." 
In more than one instance conditional resolutions 
were adopted which pointed to disunion, as the in- 
evitable result of what was termed federal aggres- 
sion. These conventions had met, pursuant to a 
call, or what might be styled a manifesto, signed and 
issued by thirty-nine Senators and representatives 
from the South, among whom are the names of the 
two Senators from Georgia, Iverson and Lumpkin, 
and the address had closed with the words, " En- 
tertaining these opinions, we earnestly entreat you 
to be united, and for that purpose adopt all neces- 
sary measures." 

■In Georgia the convention was summoned to meet 
at Milledgeville, the then capital, in December, 1850. 
The crisis was such that it appeared certain, to the 
thoughtful, that as Georgia in solemn assembly de- 
termined, so would her sister States of the South 
and Southwest act. 

Mr. Thomas Spalding of Sapelo Island was re- 
quested to allow the use of his name as a delegate. 



THE HARVEST 69 

He was seventy-seven years of age, his health was 
poor and he was the last survivor of the framers of 
the State constitution of 1798. He answered that 
nothing could prevent him from using his last 
strength in an effort to preserv^e the Union,^ and 
at the same time save the honor of the State. He 
was elected without opposition, was chosen at the 
meeting of the assembly, president of the convention, 
and gave his large influence and weight of personal 
character toward the calming of excited members, 
and the moderating of the words used in debate. In 
his opening address, to which his long life and ser- 
vices to the State lent force, he had recommended a 
conservative and dignified course of action, and he 
succeeded in his hope of so influencing his fellow 
members as to free the adopted resolutions from 
any threat of a separation of the States. In his 
valedictory, upon the adjournment of the body, he 
was able to affirm his hope and belief, that " This 
convention had done much towards the preservation 
of the Union of States, and nothing that could im- 
peril it." He died on his way, and before reaching, 
but in sight of, his island home, a home that he had 

3 Mr. Spalding's words were, " Gentlemen, I thank you for 
the honor. I think you should have at this time some intima- 
tion of my views on the subject upon which we meet. I un- 
hesitatingly say to you that rather than see a separation of 
these States under whose Union we have so prospered for 
sixty-three years, I would prefer to see myself and all of mine 
buried under the sods of Georgia." — Savaxnah Georgian, 
January 10, 1851. 



70 THE HARVEST 

erected, low and massive, defiant, like the compact 
between the States, of storm and tempest, but fated 
to be now but a memory and a lesson. Such was the 
love of country that existed in Georgia before greed 
of place and power had displaced reason and sound 
judgment in the minds of the leaders, in both the 
North and the South. 

We read in Benton's " Thirty Years in the Sen- 
ate " that on January 1, 1850, a leading paper of 
South Carolina wrote, " When the future historian 
shall address himself to the task of portraying the 
rise, progress, and decline of the American Uniouj 
the year 1850 will attract his attention as denoting 
the first marshaling and arraying of those hostile 
forces, which resulted in the dissolution of the 
Union." No statement, so far as it relates to the 
marshaling and arraying of the forces, could be 
more true. By that time and even before that date, 
the mass of the Southern people, and especially the 
young and ardent, had been taught and trained by 
their political leaders to expect and in a measure 
to desire a separation of the States. They were told 
that in that alone could safety and security be found 
for a form of property to which they were wedded 
and attached, to the utter obliteration of all other 
interests, and by that time the people of the 
North and West had determined that in no event 
was there to be any further expansion into a new 
State of a system in opposition to which the ele- 
ment of sentiment, the consciousness of growing 



THE HARVEST 71 

power, and hope of national supremacy had been 
cr3'stanized into a resolute unanimity, and opposi- 
tion to any future extension. It was not difficult to 
divine to which side ultimate victory would ensue. 
The forces of tlie North were continually recruited 
b}" armies of emigrants, who with marv^elous rapidity 
filled the tenntories and new lands of the West, 
fraternizing in temper, sentiment, and political faith 
with the " IMover in " from the New England or 
Middle States ; and had even the inviolability of the 
" Compromise " been respected such would have been 
the character of the citizenship of any new State 
as to have ensured a " prohibitory " form of the 
fundamental laws to be adopted, for the population 
of the South was not sufficient to allow a margin 
for emigration great enough to become a dictating 
factor in the character of any new State, or Terri- 
tory about to become a State. 

In the Congress of 1850 and 1851, Mr. Clay had 
brought forward new measures for a lasting com- 
promise, the adoption of which the dying states- 
man declared with pathetic earnestness was neces- 
sary to the life of the country. Almost the first 
resolution read, " Resolved, That as slavery does 
not exist noxv, by law, and is not likely to be intro- 
duced into any part of the ten'itory acquired by 
the United States from the Republic of Mexico, it 
is inexpedient for Congress to provide by law, either 
for its introduction into, or exclusion from, any 
part of said territory." Mr. Davis, Senator from 



72 THE HARVEST 

Mississippi, had answered for the South : " I here 
assert that never will I take less than the Missouri 
line, with the specific right to hold slaves south of 
that line extended to the Pacific." 

Mr. Clay, speaking for the border States, had 
responded, " And now, sir, coming froln a slave 
State, I owe it to myself, I owe it to the subject, to 
say, that no earthly power could induce me to vote 
for a specific measure for the introduction of slavery 
where it has not before existed, whether it be south 
or north of that line." 

The glove was cast and lifted by the respective 
champions, the challenge was accepted, the lists and 
field of conflict was to be the bill for the admission 
of the State of California. In his last speech Mr. 
Calhoun briefly stated, " If you who represent the 
stronger portion can not agree to settle on the 
broad principles of justice and duty, say so, and 
let the States we represent agree to separate in 
peace. If you remain silent you compel us to infer by 
your acts, what you intend in that case — California 
will become the test question." Mr. Calhoun was in 
his grave, in the shadow of stately St, Phillips, 
when, by a vote of 32 to 24, California became one 
of the United States of America. Her admission 
with her form of law marked the date from which 
a separation or attempted separation became in- 
evitable. With varying fortunes, attempted com- 
promises, and real concessions, the controversy had 
extended over a period of thirty years. The admis- 



THE HARVEST 73 

sion of this Western State, south of the line which 
had marked the hmit of 1820, was the very " Crown- 
ing mercy vouchsafed " to those whose watchwords 
had been " restriction not extension," and insured 
to them the future command in the Senate of the 
United States, and made certain that from hence- 
forth there could be no enlargement of policies which 
the leaders of the Southern sections had made the 
test questions of their political future. From 
now on they must ever remain in a helpless 
minority. 

I have thus written that the reader might realize 
how great was the pressure personally, and of en- 
vironment, toward a division of the Union, or a 
secession of States. A proud and powerful portion 
of the country, hitherto largely dominant in a Union 
they had greatly helped to build, and whose founda- 
tions they had laid, found themselves, through the 
altered spirit of the age, destined to be silent fac- 
tors in the councils of the Nation. 

Two roads only were open to them, one to fall 
back and retire into the impregnable fortress of the 
" Compact with the States," and surrendering the 
hope of extension, to there await the onset, an onset 
which certainly would have met with defeat, through 
desertion and disaffection. But this would have re- 
quired from the leaders then in office an absolute 
resignation of all hopes of personal advancement, 
or the holding of power. The other pathway 
shewed down a shadowed vista, a possible peaceful 



74 THE HARVEST 

secession of ten or twelve States, and offered the es- 
tablishment of a Confederacy, with a probable after 
accession of Cuba and Nicaragua, and in addition it 
appealed to the pride of the masses, and held in view 
the honor and place of a President to be contended 
for, with Cabinet officers, and foreign appointments 
for distribution. No course but one of these two 
was open to wise choice. Every other that led away 
from the cross-roads marked " California " was but 
a by-way, lengthening the journey, concealing the 
final end, and sure to lead back to one or the other 
of the great highways. 

From 1853 to 1859 Georgia journeyed over a 
roadway the mile stones on which were marked " Re- 
peal of Missouri Compromise," " Congress no power 
to legislate on slavery," " Passage of Nebraska 
Bill," and finally " Dred Scott," a decree which 
forced the declaration of an " Irrepressible con- 
flict," and from which, in turn, was the inherent and 
latent right of secession to be given life and formed 
into the Confederate States of America. In 
Georgia the leaders, Toombs, Stephens and Cobb, 
who in 1849 had kept the State faithful to the 
Union, were now divided as to what action was ex- 
pedient, but unanimous in declaring that a crisis 
in the national life had been arrived at. 

Toombs in burning words, and with superb pres- 
ence, appeared to all men as the very genius of a 
revolution. To his aid Cobb brought his knowledge 
of men, and his mastership over men's hearts. 
Stephens, Hill and Johnson pleaded for time and re- 



'wv^^ 



nA^<V 



THE HARVEST 75 

flection, and counseled the awaiting of some overt 
act or legislation tending thereto. At one time it 
looked as though the massive intellect of Johnson 
had raised a bai-rier over which the wave of secession 
could never rise — but this was not to be. William 
R. Yancey summoned every man of Southern birth, 
irrespective of State lines, to answer to his name 
on a common muster ground, and forwarded the 
" fiery cross " from the Rio-Grande to the northern 
border of Virginia. The air was vibrant and tremu- 
lous with expectation of a new birth; a great comet 
blazed on the horizon, spanning thirty degrees of 
the sky, and to the imaginative boding war and dis- 
aster ; but to whom ? was the question — surely victory 
to us will mean loss to our enemies. 

In these years of controversy the people also had 
altered. In the North the consitutional guarantee 
of slavery, affirmed by the decree of the Supreme 
Court, meant only a concession that slavery should 
not be interfered with, where it now existed, by Con- 
gi'essional action; not that it should receive Con- 
gressional protection from partisan attack. In the 
South the ruling manhood of the States had lost all 
reverence or love for the General Government, and 
to a growing number of the young, thoughtless and 
arrogant, it seemed easy to divide the States, or- 
ganize a Confederacy, conquer and annex Cuba, 
Nicaragua and Honduras, and openly or covertly 
re-open the trade with Africa: the parent cause of 
this very difference and issue, but in which they 
saw wealth, success, and self-indulgence. 



76 THE HARVEST 

Such was the number and character of the popu- 
lation of the country when the year I860 drew to its 
close, and 1861, big with the momentous issues of the 
coming events, cast its shadow upon a people abso- 
lutely ignorant and unheedful of the gravity of the 
situation. 

I say " ignorant," in the sense of being, as a 
mass, totally unaware of the immense superiority in 
numbers and resources of the States which opposed 
them, and ignorant of the fact that it takes years 
and years of careful preparation to amass and 
gather the material with which to wage a success- 
ful war. In lieu of arms they had confidence in 
their own marksmanship, tried and proved in wood- 
land sports. In the place of numbers they had an 
unfounded belief that each Southern soldier would 
equal a platoon of the Northern invaders. Skilfully 
led up to the fever-point of Secession by two su- 
perbly gifted orators who, with tongues of fire, de- 
claimed in every district of the State, and again and 
again foretold and promised a bloodless revolution, 
the State on January 19, 1861, declared herself 
freed from the bonds of the Union. 

If, hitherto, there had been division as to the ad- 
visability, there was none as to the right of this 
action. With its announcement there came an en- 
tire unanimity. It was as though from mountain 
to ocean there had flashed an electric spark, so 
strong in intensity and fervent in heat as to dissi- 
pate or recreate every thought that did not beat true 



THE HARVEST 77 

to State sovereignty and lift that doctrine high above 
every federal compact and law. The young men 
clamored to be enrolled in the volunteer soldiery. 
The trained officers native to the State sheathed 
their swords and resigned their commissions. The 
old gave their approval and pledged themselves for 
the care of those left behind. None believed war 
inevitable, but all stood expectant, awaiting the 
coming of events. All classes — the rich and the 
poor, the richer and the poorest — mustered side by 
side, every man hopeful and confident of the result 
should the fateful order of " foinvard march " be 
given. 

With 1861 came four years of matchless endeavor 
to create a nation ; from cinide natural resources 
to develop ordnance and war material sufficient to 
supply a half million of men at arms ; from one, or, 
at most, two foundries, to cast cannon and shell 
with which to ann a hundred forts and vessels of 
war; from caves, until then unknown, to dig sul- 
phur and nitre with which to manufacture powder 
and explosive ; with hand looms and a few, very few 
factories, to clothe twelve millions of men, women 
and children, and with the labor of three millions 
of slaves to feed four times their number; with the 
added waste of a war throughout which an army 
of invaders pressed in on every border — surely, if 
ever faith manifested itself it was in those days and 
those years. 

The South, to a man — ah, even to the man-child 



78 THE HARVEST 

— was in arms. As the lad of sixteen reached his 
birth date the mother laid her sacred and trembling 
lips to his brow, bade him god-speed, and hurried 
him to fill the place of some dead or crippled kins- 
man or brother. Indolence fled, and, in its stead, 
there was born a glorious belief in the justice of the 
cause and the eventual sure, success of their arms. 
No laggard, unless he indeed were dead to shame, 
could face the accusing eyes of mother, wife or 
sweetheart. They formed the last and true reserve 
to the armies in the field. They sent forward re- 
cruits gathered from " the cradle and the grave " 
to skeleton battalions, and they cheered sinking 
hearts by a steadfast assurance of final victory. 
By them the want of every comfort and necessary 
of life was borne without a murmur and met with 
a smile. To them are due the noblest memories con- 
nected with the history of the Confederacy. 

Victories — alas, barren of results — came at first 
in unbroken succession, until finally, depleted in 
number to a handful, without food or munition of 
war, unshod and half clothed, the fragment that 
once was " The Army of Northern Virginia " sur- 
rendered on the 9th day of April, 1865. And so 
ended the long and heroic struggle — throughout 
which deep-rooted convictions of guaranteed con- 
stitutional rights had been arrayed in hopeless con- 
flict against the spirit of the age and the awak- 
ened conscience of mankind — through which and by 
whom a barrier has been built, over which foreign 



THE HARVEST 79 

intervention could never pass, not even when 
prompted by every material interest. 

It was my lot, as captain of Company G, First 
Georgia Regulars, Anderson's Brigade, D. R. 
Jones' Division, Longstreet's Corps,* to serve with 
that army, and the remembrances of those days and 
years are fixed in my mind and my heart, as were 
they in the passing spirits of the two great leaders, 
one of whom died with the order, " Tell Hill to cross 
the river and rest in the shade " ; while Lee's last 
words were : " Say to A. P. Hill to move forward." 

With the fall of the Confederacy there came to 
many despair, for never in the history of the world 
had a whole people — every one, with scarce an ex- 
ception — been reduced to a universal poverty. The 
whole system of industry had been based on the 
permanence in value of slave holdings. They had 
formed the collateral, in numberless transactions, 
the maturing of which business obligations had been 
extended by State laws and on which now not 
only payment became due, but interest for five 
years. This slave labor had been the basis 
of all credits and all industries. Robert Toombs 

4 The battle flag of the First Georgia Regiment is in the 
custody of the Georgia Historical Society, having been there 
deposited by its last Colonel, R. A. Wayne, the best and brav- 
est soldier I have ever seen. Upon it is painted the names of 
the battles in which the regiment took part — " Lewnville, 
Dam No. 1, Williamsburg, Peach Orchard, Savage Station, 
Malvern Hill, 2nd Manassas, Sharpsburg, Fredfericksburg, 
Lake City, O'Lustee, John's Island, Evacuation of Savannah, 
Cheraw, Bentonville. 



80 THE HARVEST 

had said : " Gold, in its last analysis, is but 
the sweat of the laborer's brow " ; and trebly 
true was the saying, of this Southern and purely 
agricultural region. In the necessarily excited feel- 
ing of one race, fields and lands that, until then, 
had yielded great returns, laid idle, reverting to 
swamp and forest, whilst the former tillers — more 
than three-fifths of the number of the inhabitants — 
awaited their expected " mule and forty acres," 
supporting themselves by petty theft and chance 
employment, and reveling in idleness. By the act 
of a madman and criminal ^ the South was delivered 
over to the theories of Charles Sumner and the en- 
venomed hatred of Thad. Stevens. The magnanim- 
ity shown in the terms of surrender dictated by 
Grant, and approved by Lincoln, was dissipated 
in the fierce heat of partisan controversy, and the 
crime of the 14th and 15th amendments was at- 
tached to the Constitution. 

Through these amendments a race, knowing not 
even the elements of government or order, was 
placed, by the disfranchisement of a majority of 
the whites, in absolute control of the legislative 
halls, and became masters of the State. Such tra- 

5 In an article on Julius Caesar, found in the Brittanica En- 
cyclopedia, I read: "Those who excuse or deify Brutus, as 
some did during the French Revolution, know little of Roman 
history. Dante has been a better judge. The divine poet re- 
lates to us with appalling realism, that in the center of the 
earth, in the bottom of tlie pit of hell, Lucifer holds in his 
three mouths the three greatest malefactors the world has 
even seen — Brutus, Cassias and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed 
his master with a kiss. 



THE HARVEST 81 

vesties of legislation had never been witnessed. Such 
reckless issuance of State bonds and promises to pay 
had never before been thrown on the market. Not 
until 1870 did the white race regain control — and 
of the manner and in what way it was regained, it 
is right and best that those who were actors therein 
and those who have knowledge thereof should keep 
silent. Suffice it to say, the State's life and her 
honor demanded the price, for, without it, even 
" honor was lost." 

And so we reap " The Harvest " gathered by the 
offspring of those who clamored, in 1739, for " the 
one thing needful " to the growth of the colony ; 
and in the result there is nothing that falsifies the 
" protest and declaration " made by the men of 
" New Inverness." 

" Nor in justice can we think otherwise of it but 
that they are thrown amongst us to be our scourge 
one day or another. And we therefore pray, for 
our own sakes, our wives, our posterity," &c., &c. 

" The Harvest " has shown that, after many 
years, the foretold " one day or another " had ar- 
rived ; that the " scourge " had fallen, and, with 
it, a ruined and impoverished land cried out in wit- 
ness to the fruit of the " Seeding." 

" The sessamon was sessamon, the corn was corn ; 
He Cometh, Reaper of the things he sowed. 
Sessamon, corn, so much cast, in past birth. 
And so much weed and poison stuff." 

— " Light of Asia." 



Ill 

THE AFTERMATH 

From 1865 to 1870 the fields from which had 
been reaped the fateful harvests of the sixties lay 
either fallow or unproductive. From the inexperi- 
ence of employers in the management of a disor- 
ganized labor, and from the " cost of borrowed capi- 
tal " loaned on call, little more could have been 
hoped for. Yet some foundations had been laid 
upon which industry might rebuild former prosper- 
ity, for immediately after 1866 citizens of the 
North had been very generous in their aid. Capi- 
talists, moved by the mixed motives of a hope of 
gain and the laudable ambition of re-creating this 
section of a common country, had jeopardized great 
sums in internal improvements. Friends and rela- 
tives, estranged for years, had hastened to give or 
advance largely of their means to those to whom 
misfortune had come. Too often were these sums 
sunk without real benefit to giver or receiver, not 
from culpable extravagance or dishonesty, but from 
the inability to meet conditions which it had been 
impossible for either party correctly to measure. 
The inherited habits of generations could not be 



THE AFTERMATH 83 

laid aside at the bidding of a " pocket journal of 
daily expenses " (about the only books that were 
kept) ; nor would the newly made freedman recog- 
nize the obligation that followed his " contract of 
hire," nor that his yearly or monthly wage could 
only be made good by the sweat of his brow. 

It was in those years that the measures most 
harmful and distasteful to the South were formu- 
lated by Congress into laws. Had the South simply 
been let alone, the passions created by the war and 
fostered long previous to that struggle would soon 
have disappeared. The personal freedom of the 
colored race being secured, the accompanying bene- 
fit to much the larger number of the white citizens 
of the State would shortly have been recognized. 
The loss of property, immense as it was, had fallen 
on a class greatly outnumbered in every election 
return. The opportunities offered for the creation 
of new business relations were the same to all, and 
to many the war had been in itself an education, in 
wliich reliance upon one's own energy had been 
taught ; and to some the habit of command had 
become natural. No doubt, for a time, sympathy 
with those who, until now, had controlled polit- 
ical action might have ruled in the minds of 
many ; but sympathy, strong as is its effect upon 
men, has but a short term of life, and all legislative 
action would have been in the hands of men open to 
new ideas, new convictions and new situations. The 
equal chances for advancement offered to everyone, 



84. THE AFTERMATH 

more especially to that large majority of white citi- 
zens whose lives had been, till now, clouded by the 
contact with the now emancipated race, and the dom- 
inance/ of their owners, would have insured loyalty 
and love in lieu of the sullen acceptance of defeat, 
— which, at first, was too evident. 

But this fair and hoped-for end was not to be at- 
tained. The theories and policies of Sumner and 
Stevens were adopted. A U. S. general, with his 
attendant troops, was sent to govern the State. 
Amendments to the Constitution were passed, which, 
by declaring the absolute equality of the two races, 
in fact made certain the eventual annihilation of 
the colored vote in all practical legislation. Race 
antipathy was stirred; and while, at first, threats 
and intimidation were the weapons used on a people 
not yet free-men in spirit or courage, it was soon 
perceived that some legal process would be safer 
and more effectual. 

And so there came about the creation of what was 
termed the "White Primary," an organization by 
which the Democratic party has made victory cer- 
tain throughout the Southern States, and from 
which was bom the " Solid South." 

Some words are here necessary to explain from 
what cause and in what way this strong party wea- 
pon was able to overcome all opposition and insure 
a unanimity of purpose and action from all white 
citizens of Georgia. 

First. The population of the State in 1868 was 



THE AFTERMATH 85 

nearly 54 per cent white and 46 per cent colored. By 
the calling of a primary to which none but white 
voters were eligible, the pride of race was appealed 
to, so as to force into the Democratic ranks all who 
felt the tie of their blood. To do otherwise would 
have been to ally themselves, in a weak minority, 
with an overwhelming plurality of colored electors. 

Thirty days or more prior to any State or county 
election each and every candidate for office submit- 
ted his claims to a vote in the Primary, supervisors 
and magistrates for which were duly appointed by 
the authorities ; and he bound himself and his sup- 
porters to abide by the result. In fact, endorse- 
ment by the voters in the primary became a pre- 
requisite to any candidacy in either a State, district 
or county election. The members of that organiza- 
tion being limited to the white race, their whole vote 
was necessarily cast for one candidate, a member of 
the organization. There could be no division of 
strength by contesting aspirants. And when to the 
actual majority was added the percentage that 
could be drawn by money and the natural influence 
of employers, the party power became certain and 
overwhelming. 

And in this manner and by this organization were 
the numbers, weight of influence and intelligence of 
one race so vivified and animated as to make the 
late federal amendments to the Constitution abso- 
lutely null and of no effect. Every effort toward 
their enforcement drew closer the bonds which bound 



86 THE AFTERMATH 

their opponents in a close and irresistible union — a 
union composed of seven States of the South, and 
aggregating one hundred and sixty votes in the 
electoral college, fourteen Senators and eighty mem- 
bers of Congress. 

With the assurance of white supremacy came a 
New South, a South that turned all its energies to 
the rebuilding of the State and the laying of a solid 
foundation upon which business prosperity could 
rise. A new constitution was adopted and ratified, 
one which guarded the interests of the people by 
limiting the rate of taxation and defining the 
amounts and the issuing of bonds by State, county 
or city. Mindful of the need of education and 
recognizing the prevalent illiteracy, now supple- 
mented by the absolute ignorance of the newly en- 
franchised citizen, the legislature of 1872 pledged 
one-third of the whole yearly revenue to the support 
of a system of free schools. Separate schools were 
created for the races, but the pro rata in the distri- 
bution of the fund was the same irrespective of color, 
and this was done when the tax collected from the 
freed-man did not amount to one per cent of the 
money appropriated. Railroads which heretofore 
had been separate corporations, with lines having 
neither proper connections nor terminals, were 
merged into " systems " which united the points of 
production with the centers of consumption and man- 
ufacture. Aid was extended to the State University, 
and every effort was made to encourage the colleges 



THE AFTERMATH 87 

that had been founded by the religious denominations 
in years prior to the war. 

Gradually the character of the people has changed 
with their new surroundings. Emulation and am- 
bition have appeared in the sons of men who had 
been content with illiteracy ; their descendants are 
found always at the schools, and many are seeking 
and have gained honor at the colleges. Indolence 
has become a stigma, and a readiness to seize all 
opportunities for advancement has marked the up- 
ward tendency of a class who hitherto had given 
little promise to the future. The excessive use of 
alcoholic drinks has greatly lessened ; indeed, it 
should be the proudest boast of the prohibition party 
that they have created the feeling among young 
men of the present day that it is " bad forai " to 
drink at all: in my youth it would have been termed 
effeminate not to do so. 

The home capital of the State is steadily increas- 
ing. Great banks with sufficient means to furnish 
the money necessary for large enterprises, if not 
common, are not infrequent; and our State and our 
people are now no longer altogether dependent on 
Eastern or Northern capital. All this has been the 
fruit of the patient labor of a people who in 1866 
had seen little promise in the coming years. 

To one who has known the people of the South 
prior to 1865 there is nothing so fruitful in hope and 
more productive of thought than the rapid upward 
progress in education, manner and mode of life 



88 THE AFTERMATH 

made by that very large portion of her citizens that 
has hitherto been known as " The Cracker," " The 
Pinelander," or as " Poor white trash." No writer 
on, or traveler through, the South has failed to make 
note of them. Their mode of living stained the fair- 
est diary of travel. Gilmore Simms, in his Revolu- 
tionary tales, portrays their characteristics in no 
flattering colors ; and yet, in Horry's Life of Gen- 
eral Marion, we read of an interview between Baron 
de Kalb and the General, during which the latter 
said: 

The people of Carolina form two classes, the rich 
and the poor. The poor are very poor, because, not 
being necessary to the rich, who have slaves, they get 
no employment, and, being unemployed, they continue 
poor and care not for the country. As to the rich, they 
are afraid of their losses should the British burn their 
houses and carry olF their negroes and stock. And so 
we get no recruits. 

Mrs. Kemble says in her Journal, page 146: 

These are the so-called " pine landers " of Georgia, 
— I suppose the most degraded race of human beings 
claiming an Anglo-Saxon origin that can be found on 
the face of the earth. They own no slaves, for they 
are almost without exception abjectly poor, and will 
not work, for that they conceive would reduce them to 
an equality with the abhorred negro. 

Olmstead writes: 



THE AFTERMATH 89 

Among the people inhabiting the pine forests, clearly 
a majority of the white population, are a class of un- 
educated, poverty-stricken vagabonds. I mean by vaga- 
bonds, simply people without habitual and definite oc- 
cupation or reliable means of livelihood. They will own 
or pre-empt a few acres of unproductive, or what is 
considered here worthless, land. They build a log 
cabin; clear a small patch for corn or potatoes; own 
swine that roam the woods, and, it may be, a small 
bunch of cattle. With them life has no future. The 
women take such care as they deem right of the home 
and garden plot, and the men hunt game in the winter 
and fish in summer. 

In the year 1909 the offspring of these very men 
have forged to the front throughout the State. They 
have been quick to grasp opportunities for the im- 
proving of their fortunes, and many are now men of 
far more than comfortable means. They send their 
daughters to the best institutions for education, and 
their sons to the State University or business col- 
leges. To a large extent they are representative of 
the best element of the State. By their new environ- 
ment a new man has been created ; shrewdness has 
been developed, industry has grown ; but, as yet, the 
higher senses of honor and reliability remain either 
unfelt or, if felt, lie dormant for the present in 
breasts to which in future years will come a finer 
culture, and, with that, a higher appreciation of the 
value of personal character. 

As for those and their descendants who bore the 



90 THE AFTERMATH 

losses Incurred by the Emancipation — victims, as 
they were, of an inscrutable judgment to be awarded 
by the sword — It becomes me to speak with a rev- 
erence born of love and a common blood. The}'' 
v^ere true to their inherited beliefs and the teachings 
of years. They contended for what they believed 
were rights guaranteed their fathers, and by them 
transmitted. In trust, to their children. Unmindful 
of the years that had rolled by and of the ages in 
thought, they essayed, with the mere words of a 
legal document, to estay the convictions of the world 
and the birth of a new people, — unmindful that there 
Is a power divine which Is fixed and moves to good: 

" It maketh and unmaketh, mending all; 
What it has wrought is better than hath been. 
Its threads are love and life; and death and pain 
The shuttles of its loom." 

They appealed to the sword, and they have ac- 
cepted the award as not only final but as one cre- 
ative of a finer type of the general manhood of the 
State than was possible under the old order; that is 
to say, a higher average of education and intelli- 
gence has been produced by the altered social and 
educational conditions under which they live; for, 
while their own individual rate has been lowered, by 
the uplifting of a much more numerous class the net 
result of the whole has been Immensely raised, and 
there can now be found no one so bound by tradi- 
tion or so narrowed in nature, as not to feel in his 



THE AFTERMATH 91 

heart that all that has come to pass has worked for 
the bettering of the people as a mass and a whole. 

Nor can any deny that the men of Appomattox, 
who found no homes to receive them and only de- 
stroyed farms to restore, have built from the ruins 
of a State a commonwealth greater by far than that 
which had preceded it. 

To the race composing near one-half the popula- 
tion to whom has been given freedom — not from toil, 
but liberty of person and the right to hold and en- 
joy the fruits of their labor — has come, in addition, 
hazards and responsibilities in life that call for the 
exercise of the greatest patience and self-control. 
Their danger lies in their own number, which 
prompts the unthinking to overweening estimates 
of their own strength, a strength which has already 
been discounted in all practical legislation, and is 
only realized in the labor unions which, until re- 
cently, have been unknown in the cities and workshops 
of the South. To them, the old maxim of their race, 
" Wait, oh wait," is now more especially to be coun- 
selled. 

SUCH HAS BEEN THE AFTERMATH OF 
THE SEEDING AND THE HARVEST 

A Commonwealth more than doubled in numbers ; 
cities quadrupled in population, wealth and taxable 
values ; education more general and yearly increas- 
ing; a white citizenship emancipated from the bonds 



9^ THE AFTERMATH 

of a fatal environment, and in the year 1909 a gen- 
eration of men and, more marvelous, of women, loyal 
to the Great Republic and proud of her stand 
amongst the nations, — a generation whose hearts 
beat true to the notes of " My Country, 'Tis of 
Thee," which daily sways in the morning air from 
the halls of every schoolroom, — a generation who, 
in their loyalty to the present and to the future, are 
not disloyal or forgetful of the faith that moved 
their fathers, and has transformed defeat into what 
we know as " The Lost Cause," a cause that has 
been hallowed by a poverty nobly borne, made sa- 
cred by the blood that has flowed, and consecrated in 
memories that breathe only of courage, constancy 
and endurance. 



IV 

THE PILOTS 

In the chapters that have been written the dan- 
gers encountered and partial wrecking of the State 
have been told. The voyage of one hundred and 
thirty years was ended. The ship which had been 
freighted with such fair and noble ideals as " Not 
for thyself but for others," and the self-denying 
ordinances adopted by the trustees ; the decks of 
which had been paced, and whose beams had echoed 
to the daily prayers of John and Charles Wesley, 
" Loyola "-like souls, whose hearts " burned to lead 
the heathen into the ways of civilization and the 
paths of Godliness," had soon met disaster, for the 
crew had found it expedient to flotsam the larger 
and nobler portion of the cargo. George Whitfield, 
the gifted orator, man-of-afFairs, and evangelist, 
had counseled, assisted and directed the movement. 
Habersham, the epitome of business sagacity, had 
given his aid. The representatives of Savannah, 
and all outlying districts, had concurred and ap- 
proved. Only the fervid Celt of Darien and the 
sturdy German of Ebenezer had remained true to 
their indentures, as it was written in their shipping 
articles. 

93 



Q4> THE PILOTS 

I shall now endeavor to recall the names of those 
who, as masters of the deck, or as pilots at the 
helm, gave out the courses to be sailed, pored over 
the chart and guided the " Empire State " as she 
made way into an uncertain future. 

Of James Edward Oglethorpe, her builder and 
first Governor, no words but those of grateful and 
unstinted praise can be written. He was the em- 
bodiment of courage and resolution, and had the 
rare power of infusing with his own high spirit all 
who acted under and with him. Indian hostility 
was transformed by his presence into friendly asso- 
ciation, and threatening savage tribes became faith- 
ful and devoted allies. Industry and self-abnegation 
marked every day of his stay in Georgia. Distances 
were not measured, or hardships to be endured con- 
sidered, if his presence was to be to the advantage or 
the safety and interests of those he had led to this 
primal v/orld 

" Where wild Altama murmured to their woe." 

He added not one dollar to his private fortune 
by his stay in a new land, for save and except a 
modest home on St. Simon's, of the thousands of 
square miles that through him were ceded or sold 
to the white man, not one acre was reserved or ap- 
propriated to himself. Unlike William Penn, he re- 
tired to his English home, landless and with no 
lordly fortune cai-ved from a Western empire. 



THE PILOTS 95 

Great as were his labors, pure and disinterested as 
was his life, he has yet not passed into history as an 
accepted hero, builder of states, or even as a phil- 
anthropist. Boswell says Dr. Johnson remarked of 
him, " Sir, Oglethorpe never completes anything." 
So when in 1743 he left Georgia, he bade farewell to 
an unfinished work. Yet it is of him that Dr. Oliver 
Holmes writes, " His was the first example in modern 
times of the founder of a colony who lived to see 
that colony recognized by the world and by the 
Mother Country, as a sovereign and independent 
power." In the sixty-five thousand square miles that 
make the State of Georgia, no stone, no tablet com- 
memorating his labor, or sacred to his name, was 
erected until 1903, when the Daughters of the 
American Revolution of Brunswick, Georgia, lifted 
a granite cross, which bears upon its tablet. 

In memory of 

James Edward Oglethorpe 

Founder of the Province of Georgia 

Philanthropist and lover of his fellow-men 

Most ardently, of those of poor estate 

Of the two royal governors who succeeded him, 
Reynolds and Ellis, there is nothing of moment to 
relate, and nothing is recorded greater than a weari- 
some detail of the granting of lands and the growth 
of Indian discontent. To the third. Sir James 
Wright, whose fate it was to defend and support the 
measures adopted by a home government incapable 



96 THE PILOTS 

of weighing either the temper or the strength of 
the colonies, we owe both sympathy and respect. 
Assuming the governorship in 1760, the material 
interests of the province had been fostered, and In- 
dian invasions and hostility had been checked, but 
in 1765 bills for the taxation of the North Ameri- 
can provinces had aroused anger and discontent 
which grew by 1774 and 1775 into an open confeder- 
ation with those provinces whose wishes were for 
absolute independence. Governor Wright's large for- 
tune ($160,000) was confiscated and sold for the 
benefit of the new State. He himself, with his very 
numerous friends and supporters, lost the proceeds 
of years of thrift and industry, and were banished 
from the soil of Georgia. Great division of opinion 
prevailed. Family ties were broken. Alexander 
Wylly, Speaker of the Assembly of that date, clung 
to the Royal cause ; his brother, Richard, to the 
" Republican or patriot " side. The Mclntoshes of 
Tombigbee, and of the elder house of " Moy," 
through John Mcintosh, Lachlan McGilveray and 
Roderick Mcintosh were faithful to the King, whose 
" salt they had eaten." The Mclntoshes of Borlam, 
now of Darien, were ardent republicans. James 
Spalding claimed neutrality, but his partner in busi- 
ness, Roger Kelsal, a retired army officer, raised 
a royal company, and he was driven from the 
State. 

At Mcintosh Bluff on the Tombigbee River, near 
its confluence with the Alabama River, is found the 



THE PILOTS 97 

home of Captain John Mcintosh, and with him his 
eccentric uncle, Roderick, a daughter, and a son, 
William, also an officer in the British Army ; and 
other sons who died early in life. The daughter, 
Catherine, married George Troup. Pickett, in his 
history of Alabama, says that George Troup was 
an officer in the British Army. Major Wm. J. Mc- 
intosh, of " Fair Hope," Mcintosh County, a cousin 
of Catherine Troup, and a near neighbor to him 
when he resided at and owned Belleville, Mcintosh 
County, says, " He had been extensively engaged in 
commercial pursuits, and was a person of much 
polish and literary acquirement." His son, after- 
wards Governor George M. Troup, in a letter to 
Pickett, writes, " I actually know nothing of my 
father's life, and have no record except the births 
and deaths recorded in his family Bible." The 
mother of Catherine Troup was Marian McGilveray, 
of Inverness, Scotland, and a frequent visitor to her 
husband's home was Lachlan McGilveray, British 
Agent to all the Indian Nations from the Ohio to 
the Atlantic and Gulf. In an old letter book of INlr. 
Spalding's I read, " And those, who like myself, 
have known this highbred couple, can well under- 
stand how a transmuted refinement must cling to a 
family, even when the adventitious gifts of fortune 
have been taken away." 

George Michael Troup, the eldest son of George 
Troup, is historically the most important person- 
age of his State between 1801 and 1839-1852. No 



98 THE PILOTS 

Govomor of Georgia, until 1861, has had to meet 
questions of such moment, and lay out the policies 
to be followed. His gift of prescience and fore- 
sight of dangers to be met was of inestimable value 
to the people he served. His resolution and courage 
was adamantine. His addresses to the different con- 
vening State Assemblies, when read in the twentieth 
century, startle a thinker with a conception of 
" what might have been " had his counsel been 
adopted and carried to its legitimate end. Senator 
Hoar, of Massachusetts, in his published reminis- 
cences alludes, without mentioning his name, to the 
" success of his policies " had they been adopted by 
the people of Georgia. 

From the Mclntoshes of Borlam, now of Darien, 
came Laehlan, the first general officer from the State 
to be commissioned by Congress ; his elder brother, 
William, colonel of cavalry and first to hold that 
rank under State authority ; his son, John Mcin- 
tosh, lieutenant colonel of the only regiment of in- 
fantry raised by the State and offered and received 
into the Continental service, and others of the same 
name, who in after years wore the badge of the 
" Cincinnati," so much to the credit of the parish 
of St. Andrews. 

In the Medway, or St. John's settlement, there 
was entire unanimity. Every one of these zealous 
lovers of religion and of liberty were outspoken in 
words, and ready to support their words with deeds. 
Patriots in hearts, they were ready to peril life and 



THE PILOTS 99 

goods in the cause of liberty. Had It not been for 
the weiglit of their influence, it is quite possible that 
the energ}^ of Governor Wright, with his official 
strength and patronage, might for a time have held 
the province aloof from the confederation and loj^al 
to the crown. 

In Savannah, the republicans or " Patriots " 
were led by Noble W. Jones, John Houston, Archi- 
bald Bulloch and George Walton. Under the call 
of these four distinguished men, the first meeting 
in favor of avowed and open resistance was held at 
the Tondee tavern on July 14, 1774, and a liberty 
pole raised amid the cheers and speeches of an at- 
tending crowd. 

Steadily dissatisfaction grew, but Georgia's po- 
sition toward England was peculiar and unique 
when compared to that of the other provinces. She 
had been the youngest and most favored colony, and 
had received large grants of money in aid of her 
maintenance and for supporting her defense. Many 
of her wealthiest and most respected citizens had at 
one time or another held offices of trust and emolu- 
ment under the home government. Her population 
was small and extremely scattered. Westward and 
northward she was watched by Indian tribes, sure to 
be pledged as allies of the British forces should war 
be declared. Of manufactories she was destitute. 
But the Patriots were aggressive and confident. In 
their ranks were found all the young and adventur- 
ous, hopeful of attaining distinction and influence, 



100 THE PILOTS 

and they were counseled and led by men of deter- 
mination, patriotism and matured wisdom.^ In the 
Tory or Royal party, lethargy prevailed, the leth- 
argy that comes with an attained competence and 
years of ease. Many sought to conceal their faith 
behind a pretended conservatism, or an avowed neu- 
trality. On May 10, 1775, the news of Lexington 
— " the shot that echoed around the world " — came, 
and on the night following the first overt act in 
Georgia, of a rebellion to be afterwards ennobled into 
a Revolution, was enacted. Noble W. Jones, Joseph 
Habersham and Edward Telfair, with a few follow- 
ers, broke into the King's Magazine, seized five hun- 
dred pounds of powder there stored, and it is said 
sent the same to be used by the guns at Bunker Hill. 
Governor Wright was arrested by a self-appointed 
committee and confined to his house. He broke his 
parole and took refuge, with the help of Mr. Mul- 
ryne, aboard a British man-of-war. For a short 

1 During the second week in January, 1775, a district con- 
gress was held by the inhabitants of St. Andrew's Parish (now 
Darien), in which a series of resolutions were passed embody- 
ing with great force and earnestness the views of the free-hold- 
ers of tliat large and flourishing parish. The resolutions were 
six in number. The first expresses their approbation " of the 
conduct of tlie loyal and brave people of Boston " and their 
acquiescence in all the resolutions of the American Congress." 
The fifth expresses " our disapprobation and abhorrence of the 
unnatural practice of slavery in America, and our purpose to 
urge the manumission of our slaves in this Colony.'' (Stevens: 
" Georgia," Vol. II, page 87.) Signed — Lachlan Mcintosh, 
George Threadcraft, John Mcintosh, and some thirty more 
names. 



THE PILOTS 101 

period the Council of Safety, with Mr. Bulloch as 
President, presided over the whole territory, passing 
many bills or ordinances for the raising of troops, 
and acts that banished from the State, and confis- 
cated the property of such persons as they judged 
were friendly to the former government. 

The invasion, from Florida, of General Prevost, 
with the landing of Colonel Campbell on Tybee Is- 
land, the capture of Savannah and after advance to 
Augusta, gave for a time an absolute supremacy to 
the Royal cause, the State authority having been 
restricted to the one County of Wilkes. Confisca- 
tory bills were passed by both sides. At almost every 
meeting of the now fugitive State Assembly, some 
citizen was denounced and exile pronounced. Two 
hundred and eighty persons of reputation and means 
were proscribed, and their estates declared forfeited 
to the government. In many cases the rigor of the 
law was extended to " their heirs and assigns." How 
great this proportion, will be realized when we learn 
that in Pennsylvania, with her large population, but 
ninety-eight were proscribed ; in Virginia but a few 
and in New York none. The close of the war found 
the new government triumphant in arms and prin- 
ciple, but bankrupt of all assets except the public 
land, whose value was yet unknown. 

The men who had distinguished themselves by 
energy and courage during the war became natu- 
rally the leaders in the days of peace. It was his 
deserved fame as a soldier that grave to James Jack- 



102 THE PILOTS 

son, as of a right, the power to greatly influence the 
growth and character of the State. 

Successive governors were chosen and elected, 
whose very names have now been forgotten. Their 
duties were chiefly the forging into shape, and 
bringing into practical working the still inchoate 
State government. The Federal Union was eff'ected 
by the adoption and ratification of the Constitu- 
tion of the United States. Senators and Representa- 
tives took their seats, and the great wheel of a gov- 
ernment " of the people, for the people and by the 
people " turned on an axis that rested on the ex- 
pressed will of the citizens of the entire thirteen 
States. 

In 1793 Governor Mathews had been elected to the 
Chief Magistracy in Georgia. A Virginian by birth, 
a gallant soldier of Morgan's Corps, his reputation 
was spotless. But on December 24, 1794, a bill 
had been passed by the legislature then sitting in 
Augusta. This bill was entitled, " An act providing 
for the sale of the Western Territory to several 
Companies." On January 7 it was presented to 
the Governor and signed by him. By its provisions 
thirty-five millions of acres, as then estimated, now 
known to have been eighty millions, were sold to four 
companies for the sum of five hundred thousand dol- 
lars, or less than one cent per acre. By the publi- 
cation of the act and the knowledge of the signing 
of the warrants, every part of the State was roused 
into indignation. Grand jury presentments de- 



THE PILOTS 103 

manded that the interests of the people should be 
protected. Judges and men of influence declared 
that both fraud and bribery had been used in ef- 
fecting the passage and signature of the act. Wm. 
H. Crawford, the foremost Georgian of his day, de- 
claimed in private and publicly against such an 
abuse of the legislative power, and asserted that the 
legislature had exceeded its just powers in selling 
the public domain. James Jackson, Senator at 
Washington, resigned his seat and office and has- 
tened to Savannah to offer himself as a candidate 
for legislative powers. He was elected from Chat- 
ham County, and consecrated his life toward the 
rescinding of the bill, and the annulment of the act. 
Judge Beverle}'^ Evans, of the Supreme Court of 
Georgia, has published an elaborate account of the 
" Yazoo Speculators," as it is termed by him. The 
facts as told by him are indisputable. With his 
conclusions some may differ, for even the argument 
of Jackson before the rescinding legislature might 
have served as a brief for the counsel of the United 
States in 1824. The affidavits to the acceptance of 
bribes by members of the legislature, ordered " to 
be engrossed in the journals of the House, so as to 
be forever preserved," lack strength and directness, 
and are in general rambling assertions of conversa- 
tions, heard or overheard. In tiTith, the conviction 
of the parties concerned, and the rescinding and 
burning of the records, came not from the evidence 
produced, but from a general belief that a totally 



104 THE PILOTS 

unnecessary sacrifice had been made of the State's 
only great asset. The Federal courts, to which the 
rights of a holder to whom fifteen thousand acres 
had been transferred, and, by the way, whose title 
from the selling parties contained no warrantee 
clause, but in lieu thereof a clause specially exempt- 
ing the vendor from a re-payment, found four counts 
as good against the defendant. 

First, — That the land belonged to Georgia, and 
not to the United States or to South Carolina. See 
Jackson's argument in which he asserted the title 
to be in the United States, if not in South Carolina. 

Second, — That the legislature had the power to 
sell. 

Third, — That no subsequent legislature could by 
any act affect the rights of third persons under 
grants of a previous legislature. 

Fourth, — That a legislative act could not be at- 
tacked collaterally. 

Under this decision of Chief Justice Marshall, in 
after years, the United States, having accepted a 
cession from Georgia in 1802 of this same territory, 
conditional upon her paying to Georgia one and a 
quarter millions of dollars, and also extinguishing 
any claims on Georgia for previous grants made by 
her, paid to the four companies, claiming under tlie 
Georgia Act, for final release, five millions of dollars ; 
five millions in 1814 for $500,000 paid to Georgia 
in 1795, three hundred and ten thousand of which 
had been paid back to the holders of the certificates. 



THE PILOTS 105 

and receipted for by them. The profit and loss ac- 
count of the Yazoo claimants stood in 1814 thus: 
$189,000 paid in 1795 ; $5,000,000 received in 1814-. 
The companies to whom this money was paid are as 
follows : 

To T. B. Scott, John C. Nightengale, Wade 
Hampton and their associates, who had 
paid to Georgia as the Upper Mississippi 
Co. $35,000 $355,000 

To James Gunn, Mathew McAllister, George 
Walker and their associates, who as the 
Georgia Co. had paid to the State 
$250,000 $2,225,000 

To Thomas Glascock, Ambrose Gordon, 
Nicholas Long and associates, who as the 
Georgia-Mississippi Co., has paid the 
State $155,000 $1,555,000 

To Zechariah Cox and associates, who had 
as the Tennessee Co. paid the State 
$60,000 $600,000 

To the Citizens Company $300,000 

Such was the final disposal of a claim in the prose- 
cution of which the bitterest feelings and passions 
had first been engendered, and then nourished, and 
which in its end furnished the nucleus for more than 
one of the great fortunes of the South. 

I shall not attempt to tell in detail the history of 



106 THE PILOTS 

Georgia. Too many dry and arid wastes would have 
to be traversed in the journey, deserts that bear no 
fruit of taste or of interest to reader or writer. The 
itinerary of such a march would closely resemble the 
diary of an individual, who bom in poverty had by 
slow and patient accumulation attained to compe- 
tence, influence and command, and in it only the 
wearisome items of a natural development would be 
disclosed. No pioneer life with capture and rescue 
as told by Cooper or Boone would thrill the imagi- 
nation of youth. No especial revolutionary hero like 
Marion or Sumter would make of patriotism and 
courage an undying object lesson. The Germans 
of Ebenezer, in the cultivation of rice and cotton, 
had forgotten the convictions that made their 
fathers, for conscience sake, exiles from Moravia. 
The Puritans of Medway, busy in the building of 
fortunes, the getting of money and the training of 
newly imported Africans, had relaxed the rigor of 
their religious observances ; and the Celt of New 
Inverness, ignoring the prayer of 1739 and the en- 
dorsement of 1775, had yielded to the environment 
and was indistinguishable in mode and habit of life. 
Intermarriages had been frequent, and with that the 
German, the Saxon, the Covenanter and the Scotch- 
man had been fused into the one distinctive type — 
the Southern Planter of America. 

Here and there an oasis is met in this " dry as 
dust " recital of bare facts, episodes in a monoto- 
nous movement toward strength and population. At 



THE PILOTS 107 

times some leader appears on the stage, whose mes- 
sage is to the people, and still more to the people 
j'^et to come. Wm. H. Crawford, with his superb 
presence and commanding genius, illustrated the 
State. He was envoy in Paris, when, after Waterloo, 
the princes and the gi-eat men of the world, like ra- 
vens to the carcass, were gathered, and the Iron 
Duke is said to have remarked, " Mr. Crawford's 
personality is the strongest and most imposing of 
all these notabilities." George M. Troup rises to 
make his opening address to an audience who for 
twenty odd years hearkened to his voice, saw and 
appreciated the wisdom of his counsel, but shrank 
from its adoption as a child would shrink from a 
plunge into the cold waters of a stream. Some words 
are due to this Representative in Congress, Senator 
at Washington and Governor of the State, whose 
fortune it was to deliver the prologue to the coming 
drama or tragedy of States' rights versus a cen- 
tralized government. His principles and character 
were almost Spartan in their severity. When a can- 
didate for office, he was urged by his friends to show 
himself at Milledgeville, the capital. He answered, 
" A candidate for the executive chair should not de- 
base that high office by seeking to influence voters." 
His political creed was the same as that of James 
Jackson, declaring that the will of the people was 
the only and one sovereign power, confining the pow- 
ers delegated to the central government to a strict 
construction of the words used in the grant, with a 



108 THE PILOTS 

vigorous denial and rejection of the doctrine of 
" implied powers " and the declaration that by that 
construction the one word, " necessary," inserted in 
the last clause of the Constitution mieht be used as 
a lever with which to overthrow the separate and 
sovereign rights of the individual States. At the 
commencement of his administration Governor 
Troup, owing to the non-removal of the Indians from 
the soil of Georgia, had found himself beset with 
difficulties. Twenty-six millions of acres of the lands 
of the State had been occupied by these aborigines in 
1802, at which time a cession had been made to the 
United States, of the " Western Territory." That 
Government had bound herself by Article four of 
that compact to extinguish for Georgia all Indian 
claims in the reserved limits of the State, " as soon 
as it could be done peaceably and on reasonable 
terms." By treaty, fourteen millions of acres had 
been acquired by the Government as agent for Geor- 
gia. Twelve millions were still held by two tribes, 
the Cherokees and Creeks, who were yearly becom- 
ing more restless and aggressive. Their removal 
was imperative and necessary to the peace and wel- 
fare of the country. The position assumed by Presi- 
dent Adams and his Cabinet was that the proviso, 
"so soon as it can be done peaceably and on reason- 
able terms," debari'ed Georgia from making any de- 
mand upon the Federal powers, and in spirit if not 
in words asserted that the State's claims would be 
adjusted and the Indian " rights be extinguished " 



THE PILOTS 109 

at such date as might be convenient to the Congress 
of the United States. Governor Troup refused to 
acquiesce in this decision, and protested in forcible 
words against such an invasion of the essence of the 
compact. In his letters to President Adams he 
denied that the Indian held a " fee simple title to the 
land," and affirmed that by royal proclamation of 
176-i the boundaries of Georgia had been fixed, and 
the holding of the red man reduced to that of ten- 
ants-at-will. For the royal right to so fix bound- 
aries, and grant great areas of land, he cited as 
precedents the history of the colonization of the 
Western World, whether Spanish, French or Eng- 
lish. For Georgia's title he referred to the Treaty 
of Ghent, 1783, and the judgment of the United 
States Supreme Court, which had said in 1810, first 
that the lands belonged to Georgia, and second that 
the legislature had the power to sell. If Georgia 
could sell, then as a corollary, the power to enter 
into and occupy followed. The labor and cost of 
this entering into possession and removal of the ten- 
ants had been assumed by the United States as part 
payment in a sale of more than fifty millions of acres 
of Georgia territory, of which two States had al- 
ready been created. That the proviso " so soon as 
can be done peaceably and on reasonable terms " 
had in equity a time limit, and that in the twenty- 
three years thp,t had elapsed since the pledge was 
given, a full period for its execution had been 
granted. His words, happily, had effect, and a spe- 



110 THE PILOTS 

cific promise was given that should a majority of 
the heads of the tribes agree to a removal, that then 
by virtue of that agreement and treaty., the United 
States would demand of the " Nations " an exchange 
of their Eastern for Western homes. Commissioners 
holding State and Federal authority for the making 
of a treaty were appointed. A meeting or council 
with the head men and chiefs was held at the Indian 
Springs on the Oconee River, where an agreement in 
accordance with the wishes of Georgia was reached. 
Some threats of resistance ensued ; one notable mur- 
der or execution was a consequence, but in time, by 
the provisions of that treaty of February, 1825, the 
State entered into quiet possession of the whole ter- 
ritory, and for the first time in her history extended 
her laws and jurisdiction over all the lands embraced 
within her limits. 

It was in this year that the movement known as 
" Slavery Agitation " first assumed a menacing 
front. Ohio and Vermont had before, through their 
representatives, presented at Washington the pe- 
titions of societies and individuals, living and fos- 
tered within their limits ; but not until February 
18, 1825, had a Senator or Representative of any 
State offered of himself a bill, ordinance or resolu- 
tion which struck expressly and directly at the 
maintenance of an " Institution," without the guar- 
antee of which it would have been impossible to form 
from the Confederation of States the great Republic 
of the United States. 



THE PILOTS 111 

On the date above, the Hon. Rufus King, of New 
York, laid on the table of the United States Sen- 
ate the following resolution : 

Resolved by the Senate of the United States of 
America, That as soon as the portion of the existing 
funded debt of the United States for the payment of 
which the public land of the United States is pledged, 
shall have been paid off, then and thenceforth the 
whole of the public land of the United States, with the 
net proceeds of all future sales thereof, shall constitute 
and form a fund, which is hereby appropriated, and the 
faith of the United States is pledged, that the said 
fund shall be inviolably applied to aid the emancipa- 
tion of such slaves, within any of the United States, 
and to aid the removal of such slaves, and the removal 
of such free persons of color in any of the said States, 
as by the law of the States respectively, may be allowed 
to be emancipated, or removed to (any territory or 
county without the limits of the United States of 
America.' 

The introduction of this resolution by a Senator 
of the ability of Senator King made a profound im- 
pression upon the people of Georgia. The char.tcter 
and spirit of the movement was instantly recognized 
by Governor Troup, and in his message to the legis- 
lature of June 25, 1825, he said, " The spirit 

3 It was this resolution which caused the adoption of bills 
and acts forbidding the " manumission " of slaves by many 
Southern States; up to this date, manumission had been fre- 
quent. See Mabry's " Statutes and Laws of Georgia." 



112 THE PILOTS 

which animates these disturbers of our peace is of no 
ordinary kind; it is the same that rallied under the 
banner of the cross, sought to propagate religion by 
the sword; it is the spirit of the crusader, and that 
never dies. Temporize no longer; make known your 
resolution that this subject must not be touched. I 
entreat you therefore, most earnestly, now, that it 
is not too late to step forth, and having exhausted 
the argument, to stand by your arms." It is of this 
and the subsequent action of 1849 that Senator 
Hoar speaks in his Memoirs, and says had it then 
been adopted, there would have been no opposition 
to such State action, for at that time Northern feel- 
ings had not crystallized into bodies strong enough 
to have resisted. Afterward, ignoring the share of 
the public lands due to Northern States, Governor 
Troup said, " Mr. King proposes to buy out our in- 
terest in our property, by the sale of our own landed 
property." From that time and onward he was the 
avowed champion of the rights of the States as re- 
served to themselves, and an enemy to all central- 
ized power. To the day of his death, he held the ear 
of the people and the respect of his bitterest politi- 
cal enemies. In 1852 he was nominated for the 
Presidency at a convention held in Montgomery. In 
his letter of acceptance he said, " I do so, solely 
for the purpose of furthering an organization of a 
States' rights party." He was the John the Baptist 
and forerunner of the future President of the South- 



THE PILOTS 113 

em Confederacy. His whole life was spent in the 
political arena ; for even after his retirement from 
active participation, his letters were sought and so- 
licited as of one who could speak with the authority 
that is granted to great knowledge and experience 
in public affairs, and in a sense to many they were 
ex-cathedra utterances to which all were bound to 
give adherence. 

EXTRACTS FROM GOVERNOR TROUP's MESSAGES AND LETTER: 

It is worse than useless to conceal anything from our- 
selves — it is far better to lay bare the naked truth — 
and in good time. 

I say, prepare for the last resort. Are we to sur- 
render because the civilized world, and more than half 
of our own country are against us? I answer, " No, 
by no means." 

Prepare now for the last resort by the establishment 
in every State, without any delay, of military schools, 
foundries, armories, arsenals, manufactories of pow- 
der. Have you not observed that our adversaries are 
constantly growing stronger in all the elements of 
power, population, wealth and military resources, and 
are sustained by a government strong and ready for 
the combat.'' Create from your militia a military or- 
ganization. They know you have courage, but they see 
no artillery, no munitions of war. If ready, we yet may 
save ourselves. The victory is not always to the strong, 
and Alexander conquered the world with little more 
than thirty thousand men. 



114 THE PILOTS 

When the adversary becomes strong enough to alter 
the Constitution and abolish slavery, what are you to 
do? 

I do not favor conventions of the Southern States. 
I favor each Southern State making for itself, and at 
its own cost, such preparations as will cause, and en- 
sure respect for her station. The militia forces should 
be transformed into effective military organizations, 
arsenals with foundries for cannon and manufactories 
of powder and all munitions necessary for war, should 
be owned and built by the State. 

Cease braggadocia and act. 

From the date of Mr. King's resolution Georgia 
was constantly and continually embroiled in an ag- 
gressive and bitter correspondence with the Federal 
authorities. The claims regarding the removal of 
the Indians, and its long-deferred settlement, had 
done much to destroy the friendship and comity that 
should have existed, and from 1825 to 1850, the date 
of Mr. Clay's " compromise measure," the party 
favoring division had been growing in number — not 
yet able to count themselves as a majority. Each 
year had added recruits to their number, while in 
the hearts of their opponents the abstract love to 
the united government had been supplanted by a 
utilitarian belief, that for the present it was better 
and more expedient to liold to the established form 
and order. 

After the retirement of Governor Troup from ac- 
tive politics, and the death of his great rival, Gen- 



THE PILOTS 115 

eral Clarke, the leadership had fallen to four men, 
all eminent for energy, oratory and mastership over 
men's minds and hearts. This group consisted of 
Senator John MacPherson Berrien, Howell Cobb, 
Robert Toombs and Alexander Stephens. Others 
there were of more or less weight and influence, but 
they were but the decimals in any column of figures 
arranged as an exhibit of personal and political 
strength. The four that I have named were the 
units, that at a glance disclosed how great their 
value to the aggregate. The senior of these four, 
Senator Berrien, had held every office in the gift of 
the people, and was distinguished at the Bar and 
Bench before he had accepted any public office. His 
power as a debater and speaker was uncommon, 
and his perfect dignity, combined with courtesy and 
grace of deportment, had insured to him the friend- 
ship and confidence of all with whom he might be 
associated. 

The Honorable Howell Cobb, after long service 
in the legislature, had been elected to Congress in 
1842, and had risen rapidly into national promi- 
nence. His speeches were impressive, but his great- 
est strength laid in his personal intercourse with 
those with whom he was thrown. His suavity, good 
nature, broadmindedness and common sense dis- 
armed his political opponents and drew all wavering 
minds to his side. In practical politics and the man- 
agement of friends and opponents he had no equal. 
As Speaker of the House of Representatives he was 



116 THE PILOTS 

distinguished for fair dealing and urbanity, and in 
the trying position of a divided party and an antag- 
onistic executive, he had gained the esteem of all of 
his own party and incurred the hatred of none but 
the most violent of his adversaries. 

Robert Toombs, a genius, if this State has ever 
produced one, was of a totally different type. 
Princely in person and mind, his fiery soul brooked 
no evasion in words, or concealment of thought or 
intention. His utterances were Danton-like in au- 
dacity, and with him words were vivified into living 
things with which to overwhelm and stifle opposing 
forces. In debate he reached the heart of a subject, 
not by any process of reasoning, but by an instinc- 
tive sense of the field upon which the argument 
rested, and all not estranged from him by their 
nativity, or else immuned by education and early as- 
sociation, if thrown into personal contact, yielded 
and bowed to his vehement and towering spirit. 

Alexander Stephens, perhaps the best loved of the 
four, added to mental gifts of the very highest or- 
der, the clear sagacity of a deep and calm thinker, 
and, when aroused, the power of intense and impas- 
sioned speech. His pure, generous and courageous 
life endeared him to all. Of him Toombs once said, 
" Richmond district will retuni Stephens to Con- 
gress until he dies, and then, his heirs and assigns." 

The men that have been named were, in truth, the 
officers who guided and directed the State in her 
long progress from colony and province to that of 



THE PILOTS 117 

sovereign State; from statehood to membership in a 
great and growing republic, and onward, first into 
the morning lights of a confederacy of sister States, 
and then into the midnight gloom of the " lost 
cause." 

Oglethorpe, founder and guardian ; Wright, who 
sought in vain to hold a people true to their sov- 
ereign and to the " salt they had eaten " ; Bulloch, 
Jones, Walton,* Hall, Gwinnet, Habersham and Mc- 
intosh, who saw a nobler future, in an armed re- 
sistance, than that offered by a slothful, peaceful 
and prosperous dependence. 

George M. Troup, self-chosen champion for his 
sovereign ! — The State ! — whose counsels, if followed, 
might have led to some safe passageway through 
the narrow strait, already beset Eastward, West- 
ward and Northward " by the spirit of intolerance," 
and other spirits bom of the new age and awakened 

4 In the words of another writer, those who did not know 
Robert Toombs can form no conception of " The splendor with 
which he moved amid the dramatic scenes of 1859 and '60. A 
man of marked physical beauty, golden tongued and lion 
hearted, he gloried in the whirlwind and caught his inspiration 
from the storm. He inflamed by his speech and swayed by his 
magnetic fire. To the rights of the South as he comprehended 
them, was his supreme devotion pledged. In tone and man- 
ner emphatic, even to tlie verge of menace, and essaying by 
sudden bursts, savoring almost of inspiration, to decide the 
fate of great questions. Such was Robert Toombs, greatest 
of Georgia's sons. Mighty was his influence in precipitating 
the coming struggle. Most potent were his persuasions in in- 
ducing Georgia to secede from the Union. He died unrecon- 
ciled to existing conditions. 



118 THE PILOTS 

thought. Berrien, Cobb, Toombs and Stephens, who, 
true to their blood-bond, gave their all, their men- 
tality in counsel, and their blood and their strength 
in the field in aid of their native land. 

And now as we close this brief record of a part of 
Georgia's past history are we not forced to acknowl- 
edge and recognize the supremacy and power of the 
surroundings and environment of a people toward 
the declaration of their creed and the shaping of 
the characters and actors in national and political 
life? 

The fate of the State rested on a form of labor 
which in a measure forbade the inflow of workmen 
and artisans, the want of whom checked the coming 
in of capital, since it restricted industrial activity 
to the one pursuit of agriculture and limited its 
profits to those arising from the sale of the crude 
products of the soil — a system not of intensive farm- 
ing but of the plantation type, necessitating often 
a removal to and a residence in the new and remoter 
portions of the State, forcing a comparative isola- 
tion in family Hfe, and a consequent ignoring of the 
standards of belief brought into being and accepted 
by the world. As the years progressed in thought, 
an accompanying mental isolation, which insured 
and built up a false estimate of personal value and 
strength, since its only contrast, at home and 
abroad, was with the offspring of indigence or the 
"chattel" held to till the fields; a gradual, if not 
rapid, exhausting of the soil, a demand for new ter- 



THE PILOTS 119 

ntory, capable of giving larger returns, a demand 
adopted by " client and patron," or by poor and 
rich, as necessary and their right under the terms of 
the Union, and the support of which was absolutely 
necessary to all who might seek public office. From 
which came the demand for " equal share in all ter- 
ritory acquired by the General Government " with its 
after momentous consequences, thus providing 
the fulcrum for the lever destined to change the fate 
of a nation and its life, and provide the down-press- 
ing weight of the harvest that had come from the 
seed that had been sown in 1740 throughout the 
Colony of Georgia. 

To close this sketch of Georgia's past history and 
make no mention or reference to the present con- 
dition and probable future of the race that has been 
transplanted from the shores of Africa would be to 
ignore the most difficult, weighty and momentous 
problem that ever has been offered for solution to 
any government or nation. 

It is well to state what are the elements of the dis- 
cord and differences that confront us, but first it is 
just to tell of the present character of the people to 
whom forty-five years ago was given the right of 
citizenship and freedom from the bonds of slavery. 
In that less than half century of years they have 
risen from absolute illiteracy and poverty into, com- 
paratively, a much higher rank. Great advance- 
ment has been made by them in mental and, in my 
belief, in their physical abilities, and by this I mean, 



120 THE PILOTS 

in their power to utilize to the best advantage such 
strength, vitality and knowledge as they maj'^ pos- 
sess. Even in feature they have changed, and are 
no longer so typically African, and I refer espe- 
cially to those in whose veins there runs no drop of 
mixed blood. As mere laborers, they are unexcelled 
and have no superiors, whether it be in the field, the 
mine, the forests, or on the city wharves. They are 
not addicted to the formation of " Union Societies," 
and in general give to a contractor less trouble — ex- 
cepting the necessary overseeing — and more work, 
for the same money, than any laborer on the face of 
the earth. Their power of existing and thriving on 
the smallest daily allowance is remarkable, and were 
thrift added, wealth would follow. But in this re- 
spect the whole race are living paradoxes. The 
same man or woman that will thrive and grow 
strong on a daily expenditure for all needs of ten 
cents, will at another time when receiving one, or 
more than a dollar a day, expend for " excursions," 
shoddy clothes, and make-believe finery, every cent 
of his or her increased income. And, should that 
cease, drop back to their former manner of life with 
no sigh of regret. One of them once said to me, 
" You see, we black people are like this : what we 
have not got we don't want, but what we have we'll 
'joy." They seem incapable of taking thought of 
to-morrow, and as a class, not without notable ex- 
ceptions, they remain poor and add little to the real- 
ized wealth of their communities. The primary 



THE PILOTS 121 

branches of education are quickly absorbed, and 
reading, writing and some knowledge of figures has 
become common, and now that the temptations of the 
whiskey and gin saloons have been by law sup- 
pressed, it is hoped the criminal record will be less- 
ened. Their rate of increase will not be accurately 
known until after the census of 1910, but in my be- 
lief will be found identical with that of the white, 
less the added immigration to the latter. In habit 
of life they are cleanly. More so at least than is 
often found to be the case with laborers and workers 
of a different nationality. The homes of large num- 
bers are well kept and show a love for neatness and 
the acquisition of the comforts of life. The women 
are good mothers and ambitious that their children 
should excel at their school studies. Chastity is not 
regarded by them or the men as the crowning virtue 
of a woman. Indeed, no universal or individual con- 
demnation seems to follow a lapse from purity, and 
until their own sex shall create a " caste " which 
shall enforce such condemnation there can, and will 
be, no change. After marriage and while the ties of 
marriage are acknowledged, I am inclined to think 
the larger part of the colored women feel bound by 
honor and custom to lead lives consistent with their 
vows. But before marriage and when the quickly 
uttered " we will part " has been said, they consider 
themselves released from any covenant. The number 
of mulattoes is steadily decreasing. The union be- 
tween the white man and the colored woman is now 



122 THE PILOTS 

greatly restricted to casual intercourse, and the life- 
long association with a woman of color is plainly 
less often met with than in the days of slavery. 

In the words I have written I have endeavored 
to be absolutely just and to present in the fairest 
manner the better qualities and attainments of a 
people whose future is at least uncertain. The 
habits and characteristics that militate against any 
radical improvement are these: a want of thorough- 
ness in the completion and execution of any work 
intrusted to them ; this, combined with an absence of 
persistence, and great slovenliness in the execution, 
debars them from leadership in branches of labor 
where, individually, they may be skilled, and re- 
stricts their fields to mere manual tasks ; and again a 
total or rather a too general disregard for truth, in 
verbal statements, has gone far toward discredit- 
ing even their sworn testimony before the juries of 
the country. And worse than all that precedes, a 
universal attempt and effort to screen and hide from 
the officials of tlie law any criminal who may escape 
has destroyed faith in their loyalty to good order 
and good government. With them no individual dis- 
grace accompanies and follows a conviction for crime 
or felony. The returned penitentiary convict or re- 
leased sei-ver on the chain gang resumes the same 
place in his society and home circle as had been re- 
linquished by him at the time of sentence. No so- 
cial ban or stain accompanies crime, and the failure 
to do so is largely the cause and germ from which 



THE PILOTS 123 

spring crimes, felonies, and misdemeanors. Such is 
the nature, character, habit of life, and industrial 
value of the twelve or fourteen million of people of 
African descent whose presence and residence within 
the Southern States gives rise to, and forms, the 
unknown quantit}^ in the equation, or race problem, 
which is to be solved, one day or another, by the 
citizens of this land. 

To them are opposed seventeen millions of a dif- 
ferent race and birth, possessed of all the realized 
wealth of the communities, and the owners or masters 
of every industry ; they alone enact the statutes un- 
der which both parties must live, and from them are 
chosen the judges, the juries, and the officers of the 
law. Centuries of educational advantages have de- 
veloped their minds and taught them the value and 
power of organization. The same centuries of ab- 
solute supremacy have given to them undoubting 
faith in their right to this supremacy. Experience 
has taught them what colored legislation means, and 
faith in themselves teaches that Federal laws can give 
but useless paper titles to State citizenship, and now 
they are resolutely determined, cost what it may, to 
remain masters of the country, and as firmly resolved, 
that there shall be no fusion of interests, division of 
places, or mixing of blood. To the inferior race 
they say, " With your rights of person and property 
safely guarded " you must remain content. That 
with educational facilities we give you, " Be ye silent 
and with your labor build up the country." Having 



U4> THE PILOTS 

thus outlined the character and industrial value of 
one party to this problem, and the claims and de- 
mands of the other, both of whose future is involved 
in the settlement, the difficulty of finding a possible, 
practical and acceptable solution becomes evident. 

And first, it should be recognized that at pres- 
ent the labor of one is necessary to the prosperity of 
the other, and that any general removal or migra- 
tion of one would need to be gradual and extend 
over years of time, for a different course would bring 
disaster and ruin to the business and agricultural 
interests of the South, and, furthermore, no demand 
for such removal is likely to be made by the white 
race, since a dread of any radical change is strongly 
felt by every party where monied interests are at 
stake. By so much, then, is the problem simplified; 
accepting this theory, the question will be not what 
shall be done with the negro.'' but what shall be done 
with the negro as a permanent resident in the South- 
Nearly equal in number to the white and increasing 
at the same rate ; improving in education and power 
of organization and slowly, very slowly, adding to 
their fortunes, can it be hoped that existing con- 
ditions will continue, and that the citizens under the 
Federal laws can be practically debarred from the 
privileges of State citizenship, for this, in fact, is 
the outcome of the unexpressed declarations. In an 
article published in McClure's Magazine, Mr. Wil- 
liam Archer, a scholar and writer of note, gives his 
conclusions and adds those of a man of Southern 



THE PILOTS 125 

birth, now. a resident of Virginia, and supplements 
the two with the baseless assertions of a distin- 
guished professor of Oxford, England, noted for his 
critical knowledge of history and political economy. 
Each of these gentlemen has solved, in his own 
opinion, the question, or rather foretold the final 
end which will be reached by way of a solution. 

If we could give faith to the Virginian, we could 
dismiss every thought on the subject, for he says, 
" Owing to the constant trend of the colored men, 
from the fields to the cities, and their inability to 
withstand the temptations there met, combined with 
a strenuous competition and bad hygienic surround- 
ings, the race as a whole is dying out, from the 
losses incurred from the diseases and vices which are 
encountered in the slums and tenements of the great 
cities." 

The Oxford professor asserts that there is no 
such thing as antagonism ; that the feeling that is 
so called is purely imaginative, and is due solely to 
past environment, and will in time disappear; that 
all State laws forbidding the marriage of those of 
opposing color will be repealed and that a thorough 
amalgamation of the African and the Caucasian 
will follow. 

After a consideration of these statements and an 
investigation by himself, Mr. Archer rejects both. 
The first as improbable, the second as impossible. He 
then lays down four possibilities, one of which, he 
asserts, must be the end or solution of the race ques- 



126 THE PILOTS 

tion in the States of the South. Those as stated by 
him are as follows: 

First. We may worry along in the present con- 
dition until the colored race dies out or is reduced 
by disease and vice to a negligible quantity. This 
is the Virginia solution. 

Second. The education of both races to such a 
point that they may continue to live side by side 
without clashing politically or materially. This is 
Professor Booker Washington's solution, known as 
the " Atlanta Compromise." 

Third. Amalgamation by the repeal of all laws 
which forbid intermarriage. This is our Oxford pro- 
fessor's solution. 

Fourth. Segregation of the colored race into 
some Western territory, to be set aside by the Gen- 
eral Government for the sole occupancy of the Afri- 
can race. This is Mr. Archer's solution. 

Upon reflection, it becomes apparent that in one 
of these " four possibilities," as stated by Mr. Ar- 
cher, must be found the end of this race question, 
for collectively they embrace every resolution that 
might be adopted, and every action that might be 
taken by those interested. 

" Possibility Number One " asserts the decadence 
in vitality and number of the colored race, and fore- 
tells their extinction or dying out. I reject this as 
unproved by statistics, as contrary to the laws of 
nature, where a people have a sufficient amount of 
food, shelter, and other necessities of life ; as false to 



THE PILOTS 127 

mj' own observ^ation, and unmindful of the safe- 
guards that the late prohibition laws have thrown as 
barriers from temptation. Number one can, there- 
fore, be eliminated from discussion, and we can turn 
to number three, leaving number two for future ex- 
amination. 

Number three is comprised in the one word " Amal- 
gamation," and that is the repeal of all laws which 
forbid the marriage of persons of different color. 
This according to the " eminent English authority " 
is sure to take place sooner or later. He pronounces 
racial antipathy to be merely " imaginative sugges- 
tion " which has its birth in past environment. Such 
a baseless assertion could only be bom of a total 
ignorance of the status and life of the two parties 
to the question. The repugnance to the legitimate 
union of the two is based upon a deep conviction 
that the offspring of such a union would be lowered 
in the scale of humanity. And for its absolute re- 
jection, it would only be necessary to appeal to the 
heart of every white man or woman, whether native 
to the South or resident by adoption. Again the 
product of such amalgamation as has been shown in 
that of the West Indies and the Republics of South 
America has not been of a character to commend 
itself as an example to be followed; while finally, the 
law-making power being now undeniably in the 
hands of the white race, no member of any future 
convention or legislature would dare face wife, 
daughter, sister, or mother after supporting or 



128 THE PILOTS 

fathering the repeal of a law which had declared 
that women of their color were alone eligible to the 
bearing of legitimate children to the men of the 
white race. 

This alone insures the permanency of the present 
statutes, and practically declares that possibility 
number three, or Amalgamation, must, like num- 
ber one, be rejected and dismissed from considera- 
tion. 

Passing on to Mr. Archer's suggestion embodied 
in number four, and in which he has adopted the 
" Segregation " of one race and its removal to a 
separate territory, wherein none but those of Afri- 
can descent should have a right of occupancy, we 
are met at once with the difficulty of determining 
the manner in which this migration and exodus of 
over twelve million of people is to be effected. If 
voluntary, what inducement could be offered strong 
enough to overcome the interest and ties that bind 
them to their present places of residence — what 
power could be invoked sufficient to outweigh that 
inertia which resists any movement or change of 
place, always encountered in natural life as well as 
in inanimate nature : I know not, and cannot even 
imagine any State or Federal offer great enough 
to induce a successful move in that direction. Vol- 
untary segregation may safely be pronounced in- 
compatible with the temper and disposition of the 
party directly interested, and for involuntary seg- 
regation, or compulsory removal, no possible sane- 



THE PILOTS 129 

tion of law could be obtained, even in the States 
to whom the question is vital. So indispensable is 
the labor of the one to the other in all agricultural 
and other business interests, that no legislative ac- 
tion compelling segregation could meet with a sup- 
port sufficient for its enactment. 

In 1865 and 1866 such a movement was possible. 
The newly emancipated slave would have given quick 
assent to any expressed wish of the General Govern- 
ment, and a " trek " of the entire race would in all 
likelihood have followed. No property interests then 
offered obstacles to emigration, but now it is to be 
noted, that small as is the aggregate of real es- 
tate held by the colored citizen, so minute are the 
divisions that very many holders are represented in 
what appears as but a fraction of the realized 
wealth of the country. Had such a policy been 
adopted in 1866 the South would have started later 
on the path of recovery. The shifting of class dis- 
tinctions would have been greater than what has 
taken place, and the changes in fortune larger and 
more numerous. But 1909 would have found more 
solid prosperity and no sword of Damocles, or race 
question, overshadowing. No solid South would have 
been needed, as a guard against irresponsible law 
making. But now it is too late to speak of the 
transfer of a whole people, of an exchanging of 
material interests and established habits of life, and 
for these reasons one who knows the temper and 
spirit of the two parties must reject the possibility 



130 THE PILOTS 

of any segregation of the colored race, and turn to 
number two as the only solution possible. 

Thus have we been forced to abandon and dismiss 
from consideration three of the four " possibilities," 
in one of which Mr. Archer has rightly affirmed must 
be found an answer to a question which involves 
the future well being of a part of this union of 
States. 

The second proposition alone remains to be ex- 
amined, and, since collectively the four embrace every 
possible solution or action, the adoption of the one 
now to be examined is inevitable. It asserts that 
by the education of both races a point may be 
reached where the two may live side by side with- 
out clashing in either material or political life. Be- 
fore the acceptance of this assertion it will be neces- 
sary to define what in our belief is here meant by 
the word " education," for certainly no mere ad- 
vance in literary or even industrial development 
could warrant a change from the use of the word 
" possibility " to the more hopeful term of " prob- 
ability." A cultivation of a higher order will be 
absolutely requisite and the progress to be made 
must be in schools dedicated to justice, forbearance 
and patience. The now dominating class must learn 
to give absolute justice in personal as well as in 
property rights, excepting only their right of being 
recognized as giver and law maker; the other in the 
acceptance of personal and property guarantees 
must simply strive to do their best in that state of 



THE PILOTS 181 

life in which it has pleased God to place them. With 
this Utopian idea of moral improvement realized, it 
might be possible to find warrant for writing, " We 
can educate both races so that they may live ami- 
cably and without clashing," even when grown, the 
one to thirty, and the other to forty millions. This 
education must take its origin in absolute justice, 
with personal and proprietary rights guaranteed to 
one and practiced by the other, and in patience and 
forbearance in acceptance by the one. No other 
course can avert final and sure disaster. It should 
be the part of those to whom is intrusted the duty 
of enacting the statutes under which both must live, 
to see that as a first step the law should deal 
squarely and equally with wliite and black, giving 
to each the right of trial before his own peers, a 
part at least to be of his own color, in every jury 
empaneled before which either might be ari'aigned. 

This first step taken, others would then follow. 
Many nations have lived in great happiness under 
a despotism when the despot was just and true 
in his government, and it may be that we might yet 
repeat the story, otherwise an " Armageddon," or 
battle of races, will one day ensue. 



V 
ST. SIMON'S AND JEKYL ISLANDS 

I CANNOT end this record of past years and per- 
sonages that are now no more, and make no men- 
tion of the homes and the people that were once to 
be found on the islands of St. Simon's and Jekyl. 

In a book more read and reverenced in olden days 
than at present, we learn that once " A Sower went 
forth to sow." A great artist for our inspiration 
has depicted the scene. 

Amid the brown and freshly turned furrows of 
our Mother Earth, with extended arm and noble 
gesture, stands the grand figure of a man instinct 
with life and primal strength; from his open palm 
he casts the seed, nay, " The Word,^^ fated, some 
to fall amid the dry stones of the fields, some on 
fruitful soil, and to return twenty, even thirty fold. 
No sainted Madonna wears a more rapt expression, 
for the harvest to be reaped from the seed being 
sown was the knowledge and reception into the 
heart, of The Truth, in which I conceive is to be 
included all the eternal verities, equities, and duties 
incumbent upon man throughout this life. 

The island of St. Simon's had been peopled en- 
132 



ST. SIMON'S AND JEKYL ISLANDS 133 

tirely by men of Scotch nativity, and its lands had in 
the largest measure been granted to the MacKays, 
Cuthberts, Grants and Mclntoshes, all connected by 
blood or marriage with the colonists of New Inver- 
ness. When the leaders of that outpost had deemed it 
fit and proper to declare to the world and the gen- 
eral commanding " The Creed " under which they 
had hoped to live, their kinsmen of Frederica and St. 
Simon's had remained silent, and had not joined in 
that declaration for " Satan " in the guise of a 
growing property and ease of life; "had taken 
away the good seed " and substituted a love of trade 
and of military importance. Unmindful of " The de- 
ceitfulness of riches " and of the warning of " The 
Scourge that would some day or other return," 
the men of Frederica and of the islands had not 
lifted voice for, or against, the popular demands ; 
the material rewards had quickly appeared and were 
evidenced by an increase of population and of 
wealth, as then measured, and a little direct trade 
with the INIother Country. 

With 1742 all attempts of Spain against the 
coasts of Georgia had terminated. The victory at 
Bloody Marsh had been a practical assertion of 
what is now known as the Monroe Doctrine. " Fred- 
erica," the chief settlement of the island, was gar- 
risoned by a battalion of regular troops of " H. 
M. A." The wants of the soldiers furnished a 
ready market for all that might be raised on the 
farm. 



134 ST. SIMON'S AND JEKYL ISLANDS 

The young men found employment at the out- 
posts, as guides, scouts or teamsters ; the older made 
their homes more attractive by the cultivation of 
the orange, vine, fig and mulberry. The trade in 
peltries and furs with the Indian tribes, northward 
and southward, was inaugurated and great prosper- 
ity followed. 

I doubt if anywhere within the circle of British 
colonization such picturesque contrasts of social 
conditions could have been found as in the narrow 
circle of Colonial Georgia, for in Savannah might be 
found the adventurers of that day, many of them 
the loose-living English gentlemen of Fielding's 
novels, and most unfitted for pioneer life. A few 
miles to the west the steady German tilled his fields 
under his own pastor and teacher, and was by his 
terms of emigration exempt from any call to arms, 
even in defense of his adopted land. But a day's 
ride to the south a band of Puritans, of strictest 
tenets, had planted their stakes and given " host- 
ages to Fortune," whilst southward and on the very 
frontier could be seen their moral antipodes — the 
fervid Celts of the Altamaha and the islands ; amid 
these latter free and friendly roamed the Red Man 
of the Woods, to whom the bonnet and the kilt of 
the Highlander had become a " token " that symbol- 
ized friendship and fair dealing. 

By 1810 St. Simon's had become a social center. 
Almost every acre of arable land was in cultivation, 
and the owners were, in general, persons of refined 



ST. SIMON'S AND JEICYL ISLANDS 135 

tastes and liberal education. Some were retired of- 
ficers of the British army, who had traveled and seen 
the world in many phases. The mode of life was 
essentially simple, but the hospitality was immense. 
Every door stood open to the stranger, and to be 
the guest of one was to be made welcome in every 
household. With the exception of the master of 
" Hampton Point " there was no extreme wealth, 
but there existed a much happier condition, there 
were none without an easy competence, and many 
possessed incomes far above the average. In num- 
ber there were fourteen homesteads or plantations, 
as they were then called, and on the island there 
was a slave population of about twelve hundred. 

The church was well supported and well attended. 
One service, at 11 a. m., was given to the whites, and 
a lecture in the afternoon to the colored race. The 
effect of this mode of instruction was shown in the 
improved character of the island slaves, who, in 
general, were far in advance of their race in intelli- 
gence and civilization. This church, one of the old- 
est in the State, had, I believe, the unique distinction 
of being perhaps the only one in Georgia to which 
a clerk and a pew-opener were, on each succeeding 
Easter Monday, duly elected. The clerk, pronounced 
by the congregation " dark," was, for many years, 
the venerable Mr. Davis. He sat on a high seat 
immediately in front of the officiating priest and led 
the responses in a fine bass voice. The pew-opener, 
the estimable Mrs. Davis, never failed in attendance. 



136 ST. SIMON'S AND JEKYL ISLANDS 

At nine the congregation had commenced to arrive. 
The older ladies came wearing " calashes," made 
of wire and green silk — a sort of miniature buggy 
top — which were laid aside upon entering their pews. 
They then gathered together for gossip and talk, 
which did not cease until the " Dearly beloved " 
was uttered by the preacher. The men seated them- 
selves upon benches built under the trees, received 
their mail, which was always brought to the church 
door by the postmaster, read letters and discussed 
the last news from Milledgeville, Washington or 
Charleston, until the sound of the organ called them 
to worship. The children played in the shade until 
summoned, and they in general were dismissed when 
the sermon commenced. The young people of my 
OAvn family were not allowed to leave the church, 
but at the first verse of the litany we seated our- 
selves upon the floor and opened our lunch baskets. 
At the northern end of the island was situated the 
home of Major Butler. This gentleman was, at 
the outbreak of the Revolution, an officer in the 
British army. He married an heiress of the Middle- 
ton family of South Carolina. He had resigned his 
commission and became an ardent supporter of the 
colonies. He afterward removed to Georgia, and 
brought great wealth with him. More than 800 
slaves called him master. They were equally divided 
between the rice place in Mcintosh County, of But- 
ler's Island, and the cotton plantation of Hamp- 
ton's Point. Here everything was pervaded by a 



ST. SIMON'S AND JEKYL ISLANDS 137 

species of military rule. No one came to visit him 
but was met on the landing by a vidette, who en- 
quired your business and escorted you to the man- 
sion. Everything was made on the plantation. 
Tanneries existed, a shoe-making establishment, a 
manufactory for clothes, socks, caps, furniture, etc., 
and indeed almost every industry was represented. 
No person, however old or feeble, was allowed to be 
altogether idle. One story I recollect that typifies 
this fact. An old woman coming up to him said: 
" Master, I am old, I can work no longer." " It is 
true," said Mr. Butler, but calling his head man he 
said: "Flora is not to work, but get a goose, give 
her a line and say to her each day she must lead my 
goose to graze for an hour," and for ten years did 
goose and woman pasture together at Hampton's 
Point. 

The Butler mansion, or " big house," as termed 
by its dependents, was placed at the confluence of 
a bold creek, with the river that ran in the front. 
Spacious and comfortable, it made no attempt to- 
ward architectural beauty, the only striking fea- 
ture being the seven massive chimneys that towered 
over the roof and broke the line of sky and the great 
avenue of oaks that led landward. A full corps of 
servants was always in attendance, irrespective of 
the presence or absence of the family, and these in- 
cluded a hunter, a fisherman, four boat hands, a 
housekeeper and her many assistants. Here I think 
feudalism died ; for the relations between the 



138 ST. SIMON'S AND JEKYL ISLANDS 

"Major" and his slaves much resembled that which 
once existed between a grand seigneur or a great 
lord and his " villains." The language used by the 
house servants has always been to me productive of 
both amusement and thought. Very often the words 
uttered were misplaced and at the same time carried 
great strength of expression. One once said to me, 
when indignantly expostulating against an en- 
croacliment on his mistress' lands, " I say to de sur- 
veyor, when he tell me 'twas vacant land, ' for Lawd 
sake, Mr. Penman, ain't you know dere is no mod- 
derless land in Georgia, or else white man would 
long before now done adopt him.' " Another in 
excusing her son for some negligence in the execu- 
tion of his work, said, " You know my child was 
bom ' short o' knowledge.' " 

Here Aaron Burr spent a few months alone in an 
enforced retirement after his fatal encounter with 
Hamilton. Of the manner of his entertainments he 
thus speaks in letters to his beloved " Theodosia " : 

Hampton Point, August 1804. 
I am quite settled. My establishment consists of a 
housekeeper, cook and chamber maid, seamstress, and 
two footmen, two fishermen, and four boat men always 
at my command. The laundry work is done outside, 
etc. 

Again on another day, having dined and evidently 
dined well, his bright soul breaks out as follows : 



ST. SIMON'S AND JEKYL ISLANDS 139 

Hampton Point, September 1804. 
Madame : — 

J'ai bein diner, and J'ai' fait' mettre mon writing 
deck sur le table a diner. What a scandalous thing to 
sit here all alone drinking champagne and yet, 
(" Madame Je bois a votre sante, et a celle de monsieur 
votre fils.") and yet I say if champagne be that exhil- 
arating cordial which (" Je bois a la sante de Madame 
' Sumtare ' ") can there ever be an occasion more ap- 
propriate. (" Mais buvons a la sante de raon bote et 
bon ami Major Butler.") 

Again : 

Mr. Cooper has just sent me an assortment of 
French wines, clarets and sauternes, also an orange 
shrub, a delicious punch sufficient to last at least 
twelve months — and so on. 

Separated only by the narrow creek that I have 
mentioned was the home of John Couper of " Can- 
non's Point." This place was surrounded by orange 
and olive trees with other semi-tropical plants ; even 
the date here yielded its tardy fruit. Mi*. Couper 
had here resided since 1780 and had had personal 
acquaintance with all the great men of our country, 
and his conversation, enriched by anecdote and rem- 
iniscence, was charming. His life was extended to 
the age of 92, and he had always indulged himself 
in a lavish hospitality. He was looked up to by all as 
a type of integrity — generosity, kindness and hu- 
mor ; " his man Johnson " he had taught to play on 



140 ST. SIMON'S AND JEKYL ISLANDS 

the pipes, and when appealed to in the great church 
war, known locally as " organ or no organ," he had 
sent Johnny to the next Sunday meeting with his 
bagpipe and a note recommending the wardens of 
the church " to try the pipe as a compromise." 

At the extreme southern point was the home of 
Major Wra. Page, whose only child had married the 
Hon. Thomas Butler King. Around this home 
hovers only recollections of grace, beauty and cour- 
tesy. An indescribable air of refinement environed 
and encircled it. Thomas Higginson, the author and 
man of letters, who visited it, when abandoned in 
1863, writes, " The loveliest spot I have seen in 
the South and with a garden filled with hyacinthine 
odors." That garden had been the creation of Mrs. 
Ann Page King, to whom all plants that breathed 
sweetness were especially dear. Of her in the fash- 
ion of old days had long been written in an album: 

" Good sense, good nature, and good breeding 
Went on a pilgrimage 
They visited the fair of every clime 
And rested on sweet Ann Page." 

Not great poetry, but from the heart. 

The woodland paths and roads on the island had 
great beauty, overhung as they were by majestic 
oaks and towering magnolias, which last lifted their 
sweet blossoms high to the heavens. The views over 
the waters and the green marshes were entrancing, 
especially when colored by the sumptuous sun set- 



ST. SIMON'S AND JEKYL ISLANDS 141 

tings. The very air, clouded by myriads of birds 
and slowly sailing greater birds, had a softness not 
felt elsewhere, and peace, contentment, and mod- 
erate well doing with a general competence seemed 
ever present. 

Jekyl Island remained a government reservation 
or military post from 1736 to 1766. In the latter 
year it was granted by the Crown to Clement Mar- 
tin, and was afterward sold under a decree of court 
to four French gentlemen, and finally it passed into 
the possession of Capt. Poulain du Bignon. In his 
family it remained until the organization of the Jekyl 
Island Club in 1886. The Club has spent hundreds 
of thousands of dollars in buildings and improve- 
ments. Many of its members have built winter resi- 
dences of the most costly character, and the whole 
island now presents a most beautiful appearance. 
Shelled roads and the beautiful beach offer drives 
that cannot be excelled, while everywhere bridle 
and bicycle paths wander amid the oaks and sink 
into the dells that border the ocean. Game of every 
kind abounds, and under the " strict preservation " 
rules of the club multiply to an extent elsewhere un- 
known. A palatial club house offers accommoda- 
tions to members and their families, and in its man- 
agement and cuisine it is not excelled even by the 
Waldorf or Netherlands. The owners of the island 
are the capitalists of the country and no money is 
spared toward making of it an ideal Southern 
home. But a great novelist has written in " Endy- 



14^ ST. SIMON'S AND JEKYL ISLANDS 

mion," " In nature the insect world is strongest." 
Here in this delta of the river of wealth we find a 
Rockefeller, a Flagler and a Lorillard, and just as 
their Island Eden is most attractive, when the jessa- 
mine scents the air, when the crabapple and dogwood 
begin to illustrate the winter's woods, they are driven 
from their homes, and flee before the tiny sand fly, 
native and sprung from Southern soil. Neither 
wealth, position nor art can secure immunity. The 
war of the rebellion was largely won by numbers and 
money, but here, like ghosts at eventide, the re- 
serves of the South arise and declare that in their 
land no permanent home shall be made. In millions 
the " little people " come, and before them the four 
hundred flee away. 

In closing this short and geographical sketch of 
the country I trust I may be pardoned a digression 
as to the characteristics of the people who here made 
and established their homes. If great generosity of 
heart, great honesty of purpose, unbounded sym- 
pathy with the oppressed and unblemished integrity 
in life can outweigh the faults arising from impul- 
siveness and excesses, in a great measure- attributa- 
ble to the habits of the day, then the men of the past 
ages have little to fear in the judgment yet to be 
meted out. Charles the fifth. Emperor and absolute 
ruler over one-half of Europe, said to Titian the 
great painter, as he seated himself for portraiture, 
" Paint me not as I am, but as what I might have 
been." " Think not what evils I have committed. 



ST. SIMON^S AND JEKYL ISLANDS 143 

but (rather with my power) what temptations I 
might have yielded to." So with many of these men, 
brought up from childhood with the belief in their 
own superiority over all of an inferior race. " Think 
rather of what they refrained from, than of sins 
committed." " Lead me not into temptation," the 
child of to-day lisps at his mother's knee. Far more 
did those of a past age need that supplication that 
should have come from the inner heart. In time, 
Providence rights all wrongs, and in my judgment 
the expiation has been full and complete. 

In this retrospect of the past I have been more 
mindful of the facts and surroundings that forced 
and made the history and life of a people than to 
collect the dates and particular events that were 
comprised in that life. 

I have thought to shew that the drift of political 
and domestic thought was the inevitable result of the 
situation, comparative isolation, and immediate ma- 
terial interests of those who, virtually a minority, 
yet composed and governed the State. If I have 
failed to impress my view upon any reader I pray 
his or her pardon and indulgence. If I have in any 
case gained the favor of even one I shall feel re- 
warded in my effort. 

The century is now ended. Behind me lie days of 
harassment and days of struggle, days of " Re- 
construction and days of Destruction," days when 
brave hearts strove to gather the fragments of a lost 
prosperity and other hearts as brave sank into cyni- 



144 ST. SIMON'S AND JEKYL ISLANDS 

cism or despair. One I remember who, having spent 
his all, finally disappeared, leaving upon the table 
in his room three packets, each containing a little 
gold. Upon them were written, " This for my last 
week's board," " This for my funeral expenses," 
" This for masses for my soul." On the last was 
added, " Go to wharf No. 23. On its cap sill you 
will find the end of a rope. Pull on it and you will 
find me." " Requiescat in pace ! " Did he remem- 
ber Goethe's hymn to our parent Earth.? 

" ' Let me in.' ' Let me in/ Oh Mother." 



APPENDIX I 

On every plantation, both among the field- and the 
house-servants, would be found one or two recog- 
nized and professional story-tellers. Joel Chandler 
Harris has only approximated to the " ti'ue-and- 
true " adventures of Brer Rabbit which every child 
of the years gone by has heard told, not read. Their 
recital demanded a subtle dramatic power, calling 
in certain passages for a recitative, declaimed in 
cadence to a rhythmic march and the clapping of 
hands. The voice was modulated to suit the situa- 
tions ; the general tone, a low falsetto. I have 
thought that had a graphophone then been in use 
the records would now be in gi'eat demand. Among 
the more primitive or field laborers the basis of all 
the stories were the deeds or perils of the denizens 
of the woods or waters, and were given in true dialect 
intermixed with unmeaning words or gibberish, but 
which possibly were remnants of a tribal language. 
In tales related by house-servants (generally nurses 
or housemaids), a distinct change would be appar- 
ent ; a forward evolution of construction, with some- 
thing approaching to a poetic thought ; and always 
a moral or maxim of life was inculcated. 

145 



146 APPENDIX 

I have thought that in some I could detect an un- 
conscious imitation of some novel or drama from the 
library: reading aloud in the family circle was then 
much more common than now, and no one could pos- 
sibly tell whose ears might be drinking in every word 
and sentence. The " dialect " was improvised and 
became what might be termed a " patois." 

It is very many years since I have heard one of 
these plantation stories, but I add a specimen of 
each. 

The first is that of the original African. The 
second, one next in progress ; and the last, from 
the mouth of one who had nursed three generations 
in my mother's family, and whose heart was as 
white as my own. 

HOW BUH was' got HIS LEETLE WATs'. 

One time Buh Was' meet Buh 'Skeeter in de road, 
en 'e say : 

"Huddy, Buh Skeeter.?" 

En Buh Skeeter say : " How do you do, Buh 
Was' .? " 

En Buh Was' say : " How yo' Pa do, Buh Skee- 
ter.? " 

En Buh Skeeter, 'e say : " My Pa do berry well, 
I tenk you." 

" En yo' Pa put-tetter ^ patch, how him do.? " 

En Buh Skeeter, him full ob swonger, en 'e say : 

1 Potato. 



APPENDIX 147 

" Oh, my Pa put-tetter patch, him berry fine ! Oh, 
sich big put-tetter! W'y Buh Was', de bigges' put- 
tetter in my Pa put-tetter patch is ez big ez de big- 
ges' pa'at ob my laig! " 

En Buh Skeeter, 'e roll up 'e breeches tell 'e show 
'e leetle tie (thigh). 

En w'en Buh Was' yeddy dat de bigges' put- 
tetter in Buh Skeeter Pa Put-tetter patch ent no 
bigger en de bigges' pa'at of Buh Skeeter leetle bit 
o' laig, 'e clap 'e han' ter 'e side, en 'e laf, en 'e laf ; 
en 'e draw in 'e breff tell, w'en 'e stop laffin, 'e wais' 
all drawn in — 

En 'e nebber come out no mo' ! 

Now, children, you say I mus' tell you a new 
story. You ain' yeddy 'bout poor Simon ; I ain't 
b'leve I tell you 'bout him befo'. 

Simon use to lib on old Marsa Shellbank place, 
w'er de crik run up rite in front o' de door, an' you 
kin see now de old oak snag rise up out de water. 
Now, Simon bin berry lub fish, an' ebery Sund'y, 
w'en 'e wife say " Simon, praise-bell, dey ring," 'e 
answer : " I ain' feel well," or maybe 'e saj^ : " It e'e 
too hot ;" an' all de time 'e hab 'e yie cock fo' see eef 
de tide rite fo' fish. 

Well, one Sunday ma\vTiin' Patty git up, cook 
pot o' rice, mek coffee from some ole Missis bin gib 
um, an' Simon an' she eat dere wash-mout wat come 
befo' dinnah. Praise bell ring : Patty say : " Come, 
Simon, you yeddy to him; come." Simon answer: 



148 APPENDIX 

" I got misery in my back ; I ain't gwine." Patty 
mek answer: 

" Las' Sund'y Uncle Billy say : ' Patty, how come 
Simon nebber show 'e face in de praise-house, an 
nebber barken to de w'ud o' de Lord? ' Simon say: 
' I got misery in my back.' Patty say, I tell brud- 
der Billy : ' I ain' know wat you do, but w'en I does 
come home I sure fine de pot dirty, an' fish bone to 
clean up.' An' Uncle Billy say : ' You tell Simon, 
'e better tek care, old debbil ketch him yet, ketch 
him sure, ef 'e doan stop fish on de Sabbat.' " 

Patty stop talk, an' look long on Simon ; den she 
rise up and go to sing hallalulah in de praise- 
house. 

Jist soon as 'e see Patty gone Simon reche for de 
rod, and mek for de ribber. 'E sit on de snag I 
bin tell you 'bout, an' 'e fish an' e' fish — de bell, dey 
ring yit — an' one time 'e say, I ain' b'leve fish gwine 
bite to-day, and 'e look to'rds de church. Jist den 
'e feel a nibble ; fish tek de bait ; Simon ju'k ; dat sut- 
tinly bin a big fish. Simon mek play, up ribber, 
down ribber. One time fish mos' clear, but Simon 
land him, carry him to de house, clean him an' cook 
him ; an' den 'e eat dat whole fish, and reche up for 
his pipe to smoke. Just as Simon rise up de fish 
inside Simon begin to sing, and say : 

" Eat bones and all, Simon ; 
Eat bones and all; you, Simon. 
Oh-de sinner, oh-ah-de sinner Simon." 



APPENDIX 149 

So por Simon tried to eat do bones, but 'e kan't ; 
an' den de fish inside him begin to sing again : 

" Go down to de ribber, Simon ; 
Go down to de ribber, Simon. 
Ah-de sinner^ oh-ah-de sinner Simon." 

So he had to go out o' de house to de ribber. an' 'e 
scaid till 'e knees do tremble ; an' de fish, soon as 'e 
foot touch de water, begin to sing again : 

" Go a little deeper, Simon ; 
Oh-ah de sinner Simon: 
Go deeper, go deeper, Simon." 

An' Simon scaid, scaid to death — had to go ; first 
to 'e waist, den to 'e mout ; an' 'e den stop a while, 
an' de fish sing agin : 

" Go down to de ribber, Simon ; 
Go down to de ribber, Simon; 
Go deeper, Simon — Simon, 
Go a little deeper, you sinner Simon." 

An' den poor Simon gone, gone, gone. 

Now w'en Patty come home from church, she fine 
de door open an' a pile o' fish bones on de table an' 
de pot ware Simon bin cookin', an' she call Simon. 

No answer; an' she call three time, an' no sound 
come back. An' Patty put 'e han' to 'e head an' 
study, an' den 'e say to 'eself : " I bin tell Simon ef 



150 APPENDIX 

'e don't stop fish on a Sabbat, de debbil sure gwlne 
git him, an' my wud done come true." 

An' chillum, eben now, once ebry yere, you kin 
see Simon fish from de ole snag in Shellbank crik, in 
de night time. 

" Mary Bell " 

(as TOL-D by nurse " BAB A ") 

Mary Bell was the handspmest lady in the Ogee- 
chee country, and all the gentlemen in Liberty and 
Mcintosh wanted to marry her, and near every day 
one of them would call; but she was proud and 
dearly loved fine dress and fine things, and she would 
have none and told them she would marry no one 
who did not come for her in a coach, and that the 
horses must have harness mounted in silver. 

Now, when the devil heard this he thought he 
would try his chance. So he dressed himself in his 
finest clothes, and got into his coach drawn by his 
two black horses, " Woe " and " Wodin," with their 
shining silver trappings, and drove up the wide 
road that led from Rose-Dew to the house where 
Mary lived. And after he had met Mary he told 
her of his beautiful home, and showed her Woe and 
Wodin as they stood at the gate, and said he had 
many other fine things and lots of money. So Mary 
thought him a very nice man, and she promised to 
marry him. 

Then he invited her, with her sister Nancy, to 



APPENDIX 151 

lunch at his house, where they could look over his 
beautiful furniture and surroundings and all that 
belonged to him, and they went with him. But 
when he had shown them into the parlor he pretended 
to leave them for a moment, and, locking the door, 
went out on his business. 

Now the devil had a nice young man, that is, he 
had been nice until he fell into bad company. His 
name was Jack, and his business was the care of the 
devil's three horses. He was very sorry when he saw 
so beautiful a woman as Mary enter the devil's par- 
lor, and he climbed up to the window and called out 
and said : " You must never marry the man who 
brought you here, for he is very bad, and in truth 
he is the devil himself." 

And Mary and Nancj'^ were frightened, and Mary 
said : " Oh, save me, only save me and I will marry 
you." And Jack answered : " I will try, but it must 
be now, while the devil is away, going to and fro 
throughout the world." And he saddled Woe and 
Wodin for Mary and Nancy, and the other horse for 
himself, and led them under the window. Then he 
got a ladder and they came to the ground, and he 
put Mary on Woe, Nancy on Wodin, and the third 
he mounted himself ; and he told them : " We will 
have to jump over the gate, for it is bolted and 
locked, and we will have to be careful and not touch 
the bell that hangs over it, for if we do it will give 
the alarm and the devil and his army of angels will 
surely catch us." 



152 APPENDIX 

Jack jumped first, and he went clear. Nancy 
followed, and she did not touch bell or clapper. 
Mary came last, and, though the horse cleared the 
gate the long feathers in her hat, which she would 
wear, flew up and struck the bell, and it rang out 
loud: 

" Ding-dong, the ladies gone, long-time, 
Ding-dong, long-time, gone." 

Now, when the devil heard that, he flew to his 
stable to get his horses to follow them, and when he 
saw all three were out he was so mad he did not 
know what to do, but he started after them on foot, 
and knowing, if the horses could but hear his voice, 
they would stop and refuse to go further, he began 
to sing: 

" Whoa, Wodin, whoa — e-e Woe, 
Whoa — e-e Woe, who — e-e," &c. 

And Jack saw the horses turning their ears back- 
ward and listening and he said to Mary : " Look in 
your horse's left ear and you will find a black bean ; 
throw it behind us, over your left shoulder." And 
Mary did as he told her, and straightway there grew 
a great wood behind them so tliick and tangled that 
nothing, not even a bad spirit, could pass through 
it. And when the devil got there he was mad, for 
he could not get through but had to go back for 
the angels who served him to cut a pathway. It was 
soon done, and he followed the trail still singing: 



APPENDIX 153 

"Whoa — e-e, Wodin, whoa; 
Woe, whoa — e-e, Wodin," &c. 

And the horses heard him and they trembled and 
stopped, and nothing" that Jack or Mary did could 
make them take one step forward, while behind them 
they could see the devil coming, not fast, but as 
quick as his cloven hoof would let him. 

Then Jack said : " Mary, look in the pocket on 
the side of your saddle and you will find an egg', 
throw it over your left shoulder and behind us." 
And Mary did so, and straightway there ran a great 
river between them and the figure that followed. The 
horses stood still, looking back at their master, while 
Mary, Jack and Nancy made their way on foot 
homeward; and the devil, first calling to the horses 
by name, sat down and waited until they swam the 
river and stood by his side. 

Before night they were safe at home, but Jack 
would not go with them ; he had lived so long, he 
said, sinning and serving the great tempter to sin, 
that he was unfit to be with them, smirched and be- 
soiled as he was by his remembrances. So he hid 
himself in the woods, that he might be by himself 
and think how best he might escape. 

As for the devil, whom they had left on the river 
bank, when he saw how fast the water ran he knew 
he could never get across at that place, but swore 
he would follow the stream to where the tide from the 
ocean met its current, so as to make still water, and. 



154. APPENDIX 

having crossed, he would yet force Mary to keep the 
promise she had made. Thro wood, thro waste, his 
way he took, guided only by the water as it ran to 
the sea. Through swamps of bay and magnolia, 
where white-cupped flowers breathed heavy sweet- 
ness, by waters whose green margins were starred 
with lily and spiderwort, under dark-shadowing oaks 
and cypress, he journeyed. The birds hushed their 
song at sight of the figure that cast no shadow ; the 
screech owl alone looked down on him, with the eyes 
that foretold sickness and trouble ; and when he 
came to the ferry at Rose-Dew, where ocean and 
river met, the water was not clear and running, 
but dark and turbid as his own spirit. 

Day was breaking as he crossed the water — still, 
only until the flood pressed in from the sea. No 
morning song of awakening nature hummed in the 
air; the grass grew scorched and cracked under his 
footsteps ; all living things fled at his approach, for, 
changed though he be in shape, by their innocence 
they knew him ; to only those bom of Adam and 
Eve, whom he had blinded in times before, did he 
seem but a gentleman who, in the fair morning light, 
was seeking the house that could be seen on the hill 
in the distance — the house where watched the woman 
who had craved fine things and who in her desire 
for them had promised him love and wifehood. 

With no call to servant or knock at door the evil 
one entered, as of a right. In the hallway stood 
Mary Bell, with a clasped book in her hand. 



APPENDIX 155 

" And why did you so rudely leave my house, and 
you, my promised wife, madame, I ask? " 

" A little of my own will, and still more of Heaven's 
promptings, caused me to leave your house, sir," 
answered Mary Bell ; and then, lifting and opening 
the Bible, she cried: "Away from me, Satan; in 
God I trust." And the devil trembled and his frame 
shook, and there came a whirlwind which blew him 
out of the window, as Mary dropped on her knees ; 
and the thunder rolled by, and there was silence. 

And as the devil passed through the woods he 
spied Jack sitting by a tree, and he rushed at him 
and caught him, and said: "You I will keep and 
torment." Now Jack had been all night thinking 
about Mary, for he now knew that he loved her and 
that a soul had been born in him, and he prayed 
God to give him a new life; and though he was 
mightily frightened, he remembered what his mother 
had read to him when a child. So he answered : " I 
have sinned much, but God's mercy is greater." 
And at the name of God the devil rushed into the 
woods and vanished. 

And a little dog that belonged to Nancy Bell, 
that had found Jack when he was in hiding, came 
and licked his hand ; and Jack told the dog to go 
and find Mary Bell, and the dog went home and 
jumped into Mary's lap and kissed her on the 
cheek, and took her by the skirt and led her to where 
Jack sat. And when they saw each other they ran, 
and put their arms around each other's necks, and 



156 APPENDIX 

on the following day they were married. And af- 
terward they lived very happily. 

Now, the devil, when he had to go home, was very 
mad, so mad that he tormented everything in his 
sight, and he took and beat his old wife, and he 
beat her again and again until the very sun was 
sorry for her and rained down in tears, so that even 
now, whenever it rains when the sun is shining we 
say, " The old devil is beating his wife." 

The following is a letter received in 1865 from 
" Prince," who, with his wife Judy, had been left at 
Resaca, Georgia, at the approach of General Sher- 
man, and who there remained a caretaker until 1866: 

Dear Mausser: 

I yeddy say me kin write one letter to my Mausser. 
Dem people bout yah tink say Mausser, en de res ob 
de quality folks nebber bin gwine come back no mo*. 
So Mis' Cobb him tec one ax en him breck open dat 
closet do' wha got one lock on em, way Misses keep 
him jahs en him bottle; en Mis' Cobb him teaf all 
Missis preza'aba en ting. 

Wen me see ebbry ting bin gwine, me tec de clabber- 
seen ile, en me put em up tell me want bittle fer eat, 
den me sell em fer some flour in one bag. Me no tink 
me oughter sell Mausser ile. 

Me en Tyra en Judy go fer git Mausser hog frum 
Mr. Jones. Him ent bin dey, but him wife say him 
buy em. Wen we go to Mr. Jones him no bin hab 
time to yeddy wha him wife bin say, else him would hab 



APPENDIX 157 

lie too. Wen we show em de order say 'e de use de 
hob, dem bin mighty mad, en dem cuss we. Mr. Jones 
flo' being cobber wid Mausser corn wussa nurrar foot. 

Yeddy me wen I tell you Mausser, Judy yent wut 
shucks ; she wunt wuck ; it one shame f er one big strong 
'oman fer mec Mausser feed em en him no wuck. Me 
tell em ef 'e no wuck e must n't eat Mausser corn, en 
'e do berry well now. 

Mausser niggar would ha bin hab nuff corn to las 
me tree year, only cause de wah come tru yah, en dem 
soldier dem teaf all me corn en we cotton. Mausser, 
me berry sorry me tec dat ile. 

To morrow de Chris'mas. We wish wonnah bin yah, 
fah gie me someting good. Us wanter see wonnah, but 
we cant tinker ridin' on dem ting who go wussa nurra 
bud de fly. [A train?] 

Yo humble sa'vant, 

Prince., 



APPENDIX II 

On page 14* I have used the words " spectre of 
a coming debacle." I have meant to allude to a 
mental fright, or vision of a possible future, which at 
rare intervals seized a community, stifling for a 
time even in men of the highest character and prin- 
ciple any regard for justice or the primal equities 
of life — at such moments every ear was closed to 
reason, and courtesy was transformed into intoler- 
ance and justice to indifference. 

I submit the following letters. The first is from 
the U. S. Collector of the Port of Brunswick and 
Darien in answer to inquiry as to " truth of re- 
ports," made by the U. S. District Attorney. 

The second is in answer to report to the Depart- 
ment made by the District Attorney, and is from 
the Secretary of State, Hon. Lewis Cass. 

The third is from Lord Lyons to the Secretary of 
State at Washington. I regret I have misplaced 
the instructions to the District Attorney for At- 
torney General Black, which were in effect that it 
was Georgia, not the U. S., that was bound to 
take action. The injustice to an innocent man was 
not even protested against by men who in all other 
respects were models of integrity and culture. Did 

158 



APPENDIX 159 

they not lay themselves open to St. Paul's reproach 
of himself when he wrote concerning the stoning of 
Stephen, " And I also was standing by, and con- 
senting? " 

(Written in response to an inquiry from Hamil- 
ton Couper, U. S. Atty., regarding the newspaper 
account of sale). 

Darien, 1st., March I860. 
Dear Sir: 

Your letter came to hand this morning and not being 
in the county at the time of sale spoken of, have en- 
deavored to glean such information as to enable me to 
reply to your inquiry. The negro was sold by an order 
from the Mayor's Court (James M. Harris at the time 
Mayor) to a Mr. Striplan of Tatnall County, for 
$550.00, for a term of 65 years, $200.00 of this amt. 
was paid into the City Treasury, $250.00 to Capt. 

, and the balance in fees etc. Mr. Striplan 

fearing (as I learn) some trouble following his pur- 
chase, if illegal, to his loss sent the negro West and 
disposed of him for $1200. Mr. Thomas W. Baker 
interposed several objections to this sale as counsel for 
the negro, but was over-ruled and the sale ordered 
to go on. He can give you a more full and satisfactory 
explanation of the whole proceeding. 
Very truly yours, 

Woodford Mabry. 
U. S. Collector Port of Brunswick & Darien. 
Hamilton Couper, Esq. 
Savannah. 



160 APPENDIX 

Department of State, 
Washington, 28th March, I860. 
Hamilton Couper, Esq., 
U. S. District Attorney, 
Savannah, Georgia. 
Sir: 

I have received your letter of the 23rd. instant, and 
in answer have to inform you that the subject you refer 
to, in its present shape, is not one with which this De- 
partment can interfere. No representation has been 
received by the authority of the British Government, 
and the matter seems to be one over which the laws of 
Georgia have jurisdiction. With respect to the pro- 
priety of your acting in your private capacity as as- 
sistant counsel, I consider it a question entirely for 
your own decision, and in which this Government has 
no right to interfere. 
I am. Sir, Respectfully, 

Your obedient servant, 

L. W. Cass. 

Washington, 
March 30th., I860. 
Sir: 

Mr. Molyneux, Her Majesty's Consul at Savannah, 
has brought to my notice a very serious outrage of 
which a colored British subject, named William Brodie, 
a native of the Bahama Islands, has been the victim. 
My attention has also been called to the matter by the 
Governor of the Bahamas. 

It appears that on the 27th of July, 1858, (or about 
that date) Brodie, who was at the time a seaman be- 
longing to the American barque " Overman " of New 



APPENDIX 161 

York, James Stirling, Master, was arraigned in the 
Mayor's Court at Darien in Georgia, on a charge of 
attempting to entice a slave to run away; that he was 
convicted (in opposition, it is stated, to the evidence) 
and that he was sentenced to pay a fine of five hun- 
dred dollars or be sold into slavery. Being of course 
unable to pay the fine, he was, it seems, put up for 
sale and purchased by a man named Striplan, of Tat- 
nall County, Georgia. 

This flagitious proceeding came to the knowledge of 
Mr. Consul Molyneux only at the beginning of the pres- 
ent month. He immediately took the advice of coun- 
sel, and was informed that the Mayor's Court at Darien 
had no jurisdiction in the case; that the sentence was 
one which no court in Georgia had authority to pro- 
nounce; and that the parties implicated were amenable 
to the State Courts of Georgia, but not to the Federal 
Courts. Accordingly Mr. Molyneux gave instructions 
to institute forthwith a criminal prosecution in the 
State Courts, with a view to bringing the perpetrators 
of the outrage to justice. 

But in the more important and more difficult task of 
tracing Brodie and restoring him to freedom, Mr. Moly- 
neux is anxious to obtain the assistance of the Federal 
authorities; and it is with the object of soliciting that 
assistance that I now do myself the honor to address 
you. 

It appears that Brodie was removed by Striplan from 
Darien, Mcintosh County, Georgia, to Tatnall County, 
in the same State, and thence sent to the West and sold. 
Mr. Molyneux apprehends that under these circum- 
stances it will be almost impossible to find him without 
the aid of Striplan. He suggests that the most effee- 



163 APPENDIX 

tual means of inducing Striplan to co-operate in the 
search would be to give him notice of a prosecution on 
the part of the Federal Authorities ; and he begs me 
to request that instructions to that effect may be sent 
to the United States District Attorney. 

I lay this distressing case before you, Sir, in full 
confidence that you will urge the competent authorities 
to give effectually, and without delay, all the aid which 
it is in the power of the Federal Government to afford, 
toward redressing the grievous wrong of which Brodie 
has been the victim, and especially toward discovering 
the unfortunate man and restoring him to freedom. 

I have the honor to be with the highest considera- 
tion. Sir, your most obedient servant, 

(Signed) Lyons. 
Minister for Great Britain. 

The Honorable Lewis Cass. 

Department of State. 
Washington, 31st. March I860. 
Hamilton Couper, Esq., 

U. S. District Attorney, 
Savannah, Georgia. 
Sir: 

Since my letter to you of the 23rd. instant, I have 
received from Lord Lyons, the British Minister here, 
a communication respecting the case of William Brodie, 
a copy of which I enclose. 

It is impossible for this Department, for the want 
of sufficient information, to give any specific instruc- 
tions as to the course which it is proper to take, and I 
will thank you for any suggestions which may occur 
to you on the subject. From present appearances, a 



APPENDIX 163 

great wrong has been done by the sale of Brodie and 
his deportation to an unknown place. The authors of 
the wrong, as I understand from your last letter, are 
likely to be dealt with under the laws of Georgia as 
they deserve, but in the mean time the unfortunate vic- 
tim ought to be restored to his rights. I hope you may 
be able to adopt or suggest some measures which will 
lead to his discovery and to such redress as he may be 
entitled to under the laws. 
I am. Sir, respectfully, 

Your obedient servant, 

L. W. Cass. 




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